Chapter 9: Jane's a Girlfriend?

"What do you think about this one, Jane?" A soft voice asked while holding out a wreathe of interwoven, fleshly picked, winter flowers for inspection.

Giving the project that they'd been working on for the past hour a careful inspection, Jane nodded in satisfaction. "I think it all looks even now. Who knew it was so hard making a wreathe and getting it to stay together?"

Receiving a playful shove on to her shoulder in response, Jane was teased. "I told you we could do it. This was so much fun! I haven't had time to do things like this lately with all the traveling. Sometimes, you really need to just get out and do something with your hands to force yourself to slow down and relax." Looking at Jane for a moment, the woman smiled. "Thanks for coming with me, it means a lot."

Jane returned the smile. "Anytime, Mrs. Browning. It's not like I had anything pressing during the school break. It's good for me to do something outside the house, too."

"Please!" The woman winced. "By now, you should know that you can call me Trish. Joining me for a day frolicking in flowers while listening to me bitch and moan, we're proper girlfriends now. We can't have proper conversation if you're going to be all stiff and proper."

"Well, Trish, we probably should get back. We can't finish setting the mood for dinner if we stay out all afternoon. Besides, you promised to teach me that recipe you mentioned." Jane said while offering her hand to pull Patricia up with her off the ground.

"Too true. Not knowing how to cook, pfft. I'll make a proper lady out of you yet!"

~*~

A few days prior, Jane sat on the ground leaning up against a thick tree in the yard behind her house. To anyone watching, they'd see a young woman whiling away the day with a classic book. Probably for an assigned list to read during winter break at school.

They'd be right.

Jane had decided that if she was going to infiltrate the Browning's home to look for information, she'd have to start with the basics. In all good mystery and detective novels, researching the target is essential. Either person or location, both required the person doing the snooping to know the habits of all those involved.

In this case, Jane wanted to know if the couple spent all their time together. If so, them leaving would be the perfect opportunity to slip into the house. If he left and she stayed behind then Jane might be able to see how much truth was in Mrs. Browning's Blissfully Ignorant title.

Jane also had to keep up appearances of a boring neighbor girl, like she had every year. So, she picked her standard place in the backyard. Only this year, Jane was multi-tasking: keeping up her slow pace with the book, using her peripheral vision to monitor the Browning's house, and making use of the phone's Internet in her pocket to read up on computer science and cryptography, as well as stream an audio lesson on more foreign languages.

With this quest to do, Jane had made sure to inform Mrs. Pettigrew that she was going to take some time off from the library with an excuse of needing a break. The elderly woman didn't seem to mind, especially since Jane had finished the library's online ebook selection and inventory of 0old used books to be sent for sale to the used book distributors.

After two days, Jane was starting to wonder if the two were ever going to leave. Aren't couples on vacation suppose to go out and actually do stuff? She wondered while watching Mr. Browning sitting outside in a chair talking on the phone to someone about a missed requisition form. Mrs. Browning was sitting in another with a bored look on her face while completing, what Jane suspected, was a crossword puzzle.

"And if they stay home during vacation, shouldn't it be done in the bedroom? This is just sad." Jane muttered under her breath. "Some spy he is."

~*~

Jane finally caught a break the following day. Mr. Browning left early in the morning to a complaining wife. Jane overheard something about needing to meet someone at a restaurant to discuss some things.

This is it! She thought.

Shortly after, Mrs. Browning came back outside and sulked while looking up at the sky. Jane watched her for a few minutes, enough for the woman to be thoroughly immersed in her melancholy, before she threw her back off the tree it was resting against and twisted her body so it lay against the ground. Jane stretched out and held the book up above her to read while lying down.

After a few minutes, and a few exaggerated movements of her arm in the air while seemingly trying to get the perfect position of her book to read with, she had successfully caught the attention of a bored woman with nothing better to do.

Shortly, a pair of white sandaled feet with sky-blue painted toenails entered Jane's field of vision. She allowed her gaze to travel up the attached legs all the way to an amused heart-shaped face with smirking lips and crinkled eyes.

"Yes?" Jane asked, disinterestedly, and turned back to the book she was not reading.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" The woman asked.

"We're on break."

"Then why are you still at home? I always had the best time out with friends during breaks." Giving Jane a perplexed sound in her reply.

"I have a lot of assigned reading to get through. Besides, there's no one at school interesting enough to waste my time on outside of class." Jane said with a little scoff at the idea. She had decided emulate one of those kids who can't be bothered to associate with anyone else because no one can possibly be as sophisticated enough to carry on a conversation at their level, but secretly do want friends. Only, they've been too amazing in their head so long, everyone has decided to not waste the effort on them anymore.

Jane received a snort in response. "Right." The woman turned to walk back to her house. "Come over if you get bored. I've got a lot of crosswords."

And Jane did. Though, she waited a satisfactory amount of time to let her neighbor know it was with plenty of sufferance.

~*~

Jane learned that Patricia was not all that ignorant at all, though she did seem to be content enough to immerse herself in the moment and take her husband's schedule in stride in such a way that only a military officer or politician's wife could appreciate. She hadn't made up her mind yet if this was just her or a trait Patricia had adopted to deal with the tedium and boredom.

From Patricia, Jane learned that Mr. Browning was a business consultant that did a lot of special work for the government. His job entailed a lot of travel, which Patricia insisted she be dragged along for or else she'd suspect that her husband was cheating on her as he was rarely not traveling. This was because the special work he did was in communicating with small communities and finding a way to incorporate their offerings with larger businesses that wanted to expand without having to invest the resources. Sort of like licensing.

According to Patricia, the reason that they vacationed here twice a year was because it was close enough for some of those business representatives in surrounding cities to drive in to meet without much effort. This allowed some semblance of time off without her husband having to schedule a vacation. Plus, it was done during tourist seasons so that the local politicians can better alter any deals they had going.

Jane wasn't too sure that this sounded like a legitimate profession, but for a cover it did give Patricia's husband plenty of wiggle room to be out of sight and do whatever spies do. And according to Jane's mother, since Mr. Browning's true role for the government was an ambassador with supernaturals, it'd hold up if Patricia ever fact checked his story.

All of this Jane learned after making a single statement, "For someone getting on my case for spending my winter break at home, you don't seem to be doing much outside of yours either." Patricia's floodgates of built up discontentment surged forth after this.

Jane wondered if Patricia's husband knew just what kind of fire he was playing with should she ever actually come across sensitive information. She'd probably write a tell-all novel if he ignored her long enough.

During the diatribe, Jane was invited inside by Patricia and was shown a tour of the house during scathing remarks against her husband and his lack of romance. Jane particularly liked one comment where Patricia claimed to be more of a mistress that her husband only talks to when his phone is giving him the silent treatment.

Sensing that Patricia was winding down, Jane decided to change the topic. "So, what do you do when you want to keep him away from the cell phone?"

Patricia smirked. "You don't think I haven't tried? He's too involved in some major deal this month. He doesn't even notice me when I'm naked."

Jane nodded. At this moment, Jane decided to help reconnect the couple and give them some romance.

Besides, she'd brushed up against all the walls, closets, drawers, basically any place you could hide sensitive possessions and found nothing. If something was to be found, it'd be Mr. Brownings cell phone or something he took with him to meetings. He'd have to separate him from them.

Jane smiled and told Mrs. Browning her plan.

~*~

Now, after having left Patricia to get ready for a date with her husband, Jane went back home to make preparations of her own.

Jane's plan was simple. If Patricia's husband was always paying attention to the phone when he received notifications, she'd have to get him away from it. Since he wouldn't do it willingly, it'd need to be disabled. But in such a way that it wouldn't kill the mood.

For this, Jane had suggested a cell phone jammer. This way the phone would still work, but it'd prevent incoming and outgoing notifications and calls. He'd likely think that whomever he was talking to was busy. By the time he got suspicious, Patricia should already have his undivided attention.

Jane had also suggested that when her husband arrived, Patricia would greet him in lingerie and an empty box. He'd place all his business things in the box and leave it in the kitchen. If he objected, she'd just say that he could still hear it from the dining room. This way he'd better focus on the meal and conversation, and hopefully lead upstairs to the bedroom.

This strategy made Jane's mission simple.

~*~

Tip-toeing down the stairs and slipping quietly out of her house, Jane sighed. She sighed again as she sneaked into the kitchen of the Browning's house. She had prepared a lot of lock-picking and sneaking videos for this night and she didn't even need to use them. Maybe on a future sub-quest, she thought.

Jane had waited to implement her infiltration until an hour and a half after she was sure the couple had went upstairs. She listened carefully and didn't hear any movements, so she made an effort to be even quieter. If they were still moving around in bed, she'd have an easier time of it if she made noise because they probably wouldn't have noticed.

Looking around, Jane finally spotted the box resting catty-cornered along the sink. She padded over to peer inside. The moonlight filtering through the window let her see that only a set of keys, a wallet, and a phone were inside.

Jane carefully placed her hand over the phone, and slowly eased out her aura. Through tests, she had realized that if she carelessly used the Singularity skill then her Aura Manipulation's suppression effect would suffer. That happening now would risk detection by the man upstairs. So she kept her hand close to the phone, reducing the area the aura had to extend and the potential for leaks.

Nothing stood out with the phone. There was a simple numerical password required to unlock the contents, but she cracked that. Once unlocked, Jane transferred all the contents of the memory card and phone's memory to herself before she risked probing further. This way, if she tripped something there wouldn't be a record on the phone itself.

Jane squatted down in the kitchen and sifted through the data. His contact list was just like any other. He had helpfully inputted physical addresses as well as mailing and E-mail information for each contact. She made a note to only check this if she could use a secure and untraceable computer to search through them in the future. However, at a glance, nothing stood out that made these names scream spy or supernatural. They were all innocuous.

He didn't even have games or embarrassing applications on his phone. The few pictures were just of him and his wife or a random place and location. Jane checked the meta-data of all of them and didn't turn up any results. There was no hidden information injected into the images, either, that you'd read about in mystery novels.

Jane silently cursed herself for thinking that this mission was going too easy.

Standing slowly, Jane made another pass at the contents of the box. If the phone was a bust, there should be something else that held confidential data that would let him interact with his superiors and others in the supernatural world to plan these meetings.

The set of keys looked like any other. There didn't appear to be a flash drive masquerading as something else. She carefully opened the wallet and went through its contents. A license, bank card, credit card, a few memberships and rewards cards, insurance, all the normal stuff you'd expect. Jane felt around the lining of the wallet and checked to see if anything was slipped in a fold or behind other cards.

Yes! She screamed in her mind. When she more closely inspected the gym membership card she picked up a feint pulse of data against her hand. It turned out that the card had an RFID chip feature. While not suspicious at first glance, since it could be used to admit him access if it was one of the 24/7 places, it seemed to be a key for a pair of devices to grant access.

Jane went back over all the contents of the wallet, then the key chain after copying the details of the card and placing it back into the wallet. She didn't find anything else, so the other half of the pair must must be near Mr. Browning.

Taking a large breathe of air and steeling her resolve, Jane crept quietly through the house and checking carefully for any discarded clothes. There were socks tossed on furniture, an undergarment hanging on a lamp. The area around an abandoned dinner looked like a warzone. She didn't find any pants, though.

She followed along the set of stairs that led up to where the master suite was, careful to not fall into the creaking floorboard trap. That was one benefit of the weighted training her mother forced her into, excellent weight distribution. At the top of the stairs, Jane carefully looked around the corners of the hall and proceeded towards the room where the couple were hopefully soundly asleep.

Luck was with her, their faces were carefully visible so she wouldn't have to guess on how to approach. Unluckily, they were spooning against one another with their faces directed right towards the door.

Jane decided not to focus on the couple. She didn't want to fall into the same trap she had with Ms. Winters just after she had awakened. Even if her control over her aura was excellent, a subconscious mind is hard to predict. She looked around the room to the other pieces of clothing.

Creeping further into the room, Jane carefully searched the garments for anything that could hide another RFID chip. Even Mr. Harrison's pants were clean, at least of a chip. Then Jane realized where it was likely to be: his watch.

He was still wearing it.

Keeping her attention focused on the far wall, Jane considered how to approach this. She still couldn't discern his level. This means that he is likely above level 30, using the common 25 level difference in games to hide levels. If he's a spy then he has to have excellent dexterity, a fair amount of strength, and probably some intelligence and wisdom. If 5 stat points as distributed per level, then he shouldn't have less than 150 total stat points. This means that any one stat is unlikely to be above 40.

Jane knew that stats didn't play as large a role in determining someone's threat level as skills did. However, it seemed that at level 50, if a person met the right conditions, one or more stats at level 50 would grant the person access to a merging or enhancing of attributes they had focused on. This was critical right now, because Jane was going to have to send out her aura near Mr. Browning's arm. If his dexterity is honed enough and he had finely honed detection skills and senses, which was likely, then she would be caught.

She had to risk it, though. She could probably bump into him during the day and send out her aura, but he would be more likely to notice she was a supernatural. Tonight he might awake to find her and cause even more issues, but he was also likely to be too content after having sex to be that high on alert.

Jane still kept her attention focused away from the couple and used her peripheral vision to guide her to the bed. She extended a finger slowly towards the arm with the watch that was cupping his wife. Closer and closer she reached towards the wrist. He moved.

Jane froze and made sure her breathing hadn't become irregular. She held still as man repositioned in his sleep and waited for him to settle down and let out a content sound before she checked her surroundings again.

His wrist with the watch was now resting under the covers and between his wife's legs. Jane looked up at the ceiling and bit her lip while shaking her head. Why! She wanted to scream.

Jane chose to focus on the positive. At least now any bump against his wrist could suggest to his subconscious that his wife was moving against him. The only problem was that she couldn't be sure where the watch was, exactly, and she didn't want to risk moving the covers back to check.

Still keeping her feet where they were, Jane leaned further towards the bed and moved her finger towards an approximation of where the watch was. She'd just have to let the bit of aura feel around until it found metal. It was cooler than the body, so she'd use that as a beacon.

Minutes passed, and a few close calls happened, but Jane finally extracted the RFID chip's information. Following the same path that she entered, Jane made her way back downstairs.

In the kitchen, Jane ran through the data again, only this time with the two RFID chip's paired as a key. Still nothing turned up in what she had pulled from the phone. Frustrated, Jane decided to run the key against the actual phone.

Success!

It seemed that there was a hidden partition on the phone that only revealed itself when the card and watch was near it. Jane made a mental note to brush up further on her computer science studies so she wouldn't be caught unaware of these hidden partitions in the future. Because after she was aware, she looked back over the first collected data and saw an 8-bit reference to such a location in the phone's BIOS that she had overlooked. No more bedroom creeps for her in the future if she could help it.

While some of the contacts she had initially seen were people related to the supernatural, they were intermediaries of intermediaries. The hidden information wasn't much, but it did help show a connection. It seemed that Mr. Browning would set up meetings with these people and relay messages to the actual contacts. They'd carry a phone similar to his and by the two phones confirming an encrypted passcode, the actual meeting would take place over the resulting encrypted call.

Because of this precaution, someone who wasn't physically present wouldn't know the contents of the meeting. Jane was at a loss here. The only useful bit of information Jane learned was that the people that Mr. Browning met in her village and the surrounding towns were very low-level in whatever organization they were involved with.

The one good thing that did occur from unlocking this hidden partition was that Jane gained the information needed to clone Mr. Browning's phone data. This was essential, because it seemed that the government had modified his Internet app to work through a secure connection to access secret areas if the hidden partition was activated. By finding a network connection, Jane could spoof using his phone to access their servers.

The only potential drawback is that she'd be coming in from a location that he was sure to not be in the future. While she might get by while he was vacationing in the village, when he left it would be sure to toss up red-flags to the network administrators and question him about it. She decided to use his phone's GPS tracking. She couldn't spoof the cell-towers the phone was near, but she could use the same GPS checks that the find-my-phone apps would use. She'd check where he was and use the same location whenever she was going to browse through their servers.

This process would increase her likelihood of going undetected. The only drawback would be lack of passwords for his accounts. They weren't in the phone, and weren't the same as the RFID key pair. So she wouldn't have access to his e-mail or restricted areas. All she'd see would be general information on the supernatural community. Which was still more than she had before, so she was fine with it. Especially since checking every so often would alert her to any major shifts in power.

Satisfied, Jane made her way back home and into her room. She was greeted with a system prompt informing her of quest completion.

[table=white]Quest: Monitoring Big Brother Part 1 (Complete)Quest Type: Series

Time Limit: N/A

Quest Objectives:

Gather intelligence on Phillip Browning. (Complete)

Gain access to his resources to aid your mission of monitoring the other spies in the village. (Complete)

Remain undiscovered as a supernatural. (Complete)

Quest Rewards:

Skill: Singularity (Upon Acceptance)

Access to Player Inventory (Upon Completion)

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