The rest of the day just seemed to get worse and worse. Antonio and Wilma left while Mari and David were given their new jobs.

Bringing people coffee. Running errands that the person asking them could have done just as easily. Finding the proper attachments for a cleaning hose, and then using said hose to vac up some spilled coffee.

And worse of all, nobody seemed to like them. There was none of the casual chat they’d gotten used to from Antonio or Wilma.

It was Mr. Wallis, or Ms. Miller, and the people had all the affection of frozen nitrogen.

They really don’t want us to be here, Mari thought. Meanwhile, someone who looked to be about three years older was telling her that the report she’d just picked up hadn’t been printed out right, and she was to go and print it again, and this time make certain it was collated.

I did exactly what you told me to! Mari thought. This is how we get super-villains. Bad internships.

Lunch didn’t come fast enough. By the time they got into David’s car and turned to drive to the Rocket, Mari was practically growling.

David was staring at the road. “I inventoried wrenches,” he muttered. “Wrenches.”

“Better than Mr. ‘I didn’t give you the right instructions, and now I’m blaming you for it’ Mari said.” She stared down at the dashboard. “And the way they’re treating us! We didn’t do anything wrong, the damned school blew up on its own.”

“I…” David frowned. “I don’t think they know what to do with us. They don’t look like he kind of people who would usually have interns.”

“And so they glare at us all day?” Mari smacked the dashboard. “Like it’s our fault?”

“I dunno. Maybe they’re being told to find us stuff to do, but they don’t have anything for us to really…” David shook his head. “I hate it.”

“You know…” Mari said. “We have the gadgets Wilma gave us. We could…”

“Go out, get caught, and get Wilma fired?” David glanced at her as he pulled into the parking lot to the diner.

“Oh… right. Not a good idea.” Mari shook her head. “In fact, a pretty horrible idea.”

“Yeah. Worst case, what if we run into the Other Firm, only this time we’re not working for anyone and we can’t call them?”

“It—The hell?” Mari asked. She stared at the diner and the plywood over one of the windows. “Wonder what happened?”

“Dunno,” David said. “But let’s hurry and get something.”

Inside, they found that the broken window wasn’t the only thing that had been damaged.

“Weirdest thing,” the waitress said. “Someone busted the window, came in, grabbed some food…and took apart one of the little refrigerators.”

“You mean vandalized it?”

“No. Took it apart. I guess it must be some crazy homeless guy or something, but it sure was creepy. And they took a few tins of ham, and get this, left a cash bag the night shift left behind, with about three hundred bucks in it.”

“Well, damn,” David said.

“Yeah. Figure it’s some crazy homeless person. There’s been a couple of thefts like that.” She shrugged. “Boss is pretty unhappy though, so what can I get you?”

“Two burger specials,” David said. “Separate checks.”

“Oh, you’re those two.” The waitress smirked and flipped her braid of black hair over one shoulder. “Heard about you. Hang on, and let me get your drinks.”

She heard about us? Mari looked over at David. What have they been talking about!

“I guess we’re famous,” David said.

“Yeah,” Mari said. “The incredible two-check teens.” She looked around. “But I have an idea.”

“Okay…” David said. “Does it involve fire?”

“No.” Mary folded her arms as the waitress came by with their sodas. “It’s a smart idea, a plan that cannot go wrong.”

David paused. “Mari, usually if you have to specify that the plan can’t go wrong, it’s probably going to go wrong.”

“Right. Okay, so we can’t go out and hunt breaches ourselves, right?”

“That was what we agreed.”

“So… We don’t. We just chart them ourselves.”

David blinked. “But how…”

Mari grinned. “Look, they didn’t know what was happening with the school, right?”

“Sort of… yeah?”

“So if we find something that they missed, they’ll have to let us back in, right?”

“I’m not certain…” David frowned.

Mari crossed her arms and leaned back. “Or, we could just resign ourselves to a year of collating papers and being told to do it again, even though we followed the instructions!”

“Fine, Mari,” David said. “When do we do this?”

“Well…” Mari grinned. “After work tonight, we’ve got a couple of hours…”

“You just want to stay out because you’re going to be in a bad mood, right?” David asked.

Mari stared at him, then leaned back as their food was delivered. When the waitress left, she picked up on fry and aimed it at David. “That is one of my possible motivations,” Mari said archly. “Now lets eat before we end up being late to the totally important duties regarding collating reports.”

By the time they left work, David was agreeing with Mari. They’d come back from lunch and…

Make work. That’s what his mom called it. Work that was just there to keep you working, not to help anyone else. He’d done three print outs that were just left on the desk of the people he’d delivered them to, and one of which ended up being used as a coaster.

They have no idea what to use us for. Everyone here had graduated from college, and when they talked, David could barely understand what they were talking about. They knew the equipment, knew the material…

And there wasn’t time or energy to waste talking to a pair of kids.

So here we are, with everyone being told to keep us busy and out of the way.

David hated it. So when they drove off, the sun doing down, David was all for Mari’s plan.

“We go home, get our units and go out looking,” he said. “But no shooting. We just record, right?”

“Right!” Mari said.

Their parents weren’t home from work yet, and Mari’s brother was with his friends, so there was no question why they just ran in, got the gear, and jumped back into David’s car. He slapped the bracelet on his arm and activated it. “So…” David frowned. “Nothing.”

“Well, it’s not like they have a long range,” Mari pointed out. “What did you expect, a breach in front of our house?”

“It would have made things easy…”

“Up until a giant AE dropped by and ate our families!” Mary said.

“Good point.” David pulled out into the street and headed off into the growing dusk.

The next hour was…

“Boring,” Mari said. “The highest we’ve seen is a level 0.01. That’s barely above ambient.”

“Well, they have a lot more guys,” David said.

“PIBS!”

“Yes, Mari, PIBs.” David frowned. “Okay, yeah, anything in the city they’ll jump on.” He sighed. “Tell you what, why don’t we get a milkshake to go and keep driving around for another hour or so, then we go home for the day.”

“So soon?”

“Before your parents start asking questions, or maybe call Mr. Otieno about us and why he’s keeping us late.”

“That’d be bad,” Mari said in a small voice.

“Yeah.” David shook his head. It’d be too much to expect something to happen the first day we tried to find things by ourselves…

The two were silent as the turned into the Rocket-79 parking lot. David chuckled as he saw the remains of the refrigerator sitting by the trash bin. “I guess they got a new one,” he told Mari.

“Yeah, I—” The wristband emitted an urgent beep.

What the… David checked it. Level 5, what the hell… Then he took a step and the reading went to level 0.2.

“Mari,” David said. “Check this…”

“Okay, it’s—woah…” Mari looked around, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the two teens standing by the dead refrigerator. “How…” She paused and started walking around the refrigerator, staring at her wrist-mounted display. Then she stopped. “It’s higher this way,” Mari said. “About .5.”

David followed her gaze. The direction she was pointing at went across the street. Every business there was already closed, save for a single smoke shop…but there was an alley.

“Wait a minute,” David said. “Why would…”

“A dismantled refrigerator read that high and not have an effect on anyone else?” Mari shook her head. “Who knows. Let’s go!”

She took off across the street, David following her.

Great Mari, get a ticket for jaywalking. On the other hand… This was something strange. Something like what they’d been doing, and if there was an issue in the middle of town…

“Hang on, Mari,” David said. He caught up to her just as she got to the mouth of the alley. “What’s the reading on your wristband?”

“It’s… .7.”

“Mine as well,” David frowned. “So it’s going up.”

“Let’s check,” Mari said. She turned on a little keychain LED light. “This is good enough.”

“Fine, but if it goes up, we back off,” David said. “We can always just call it in and say something felt weird…”

“Right.” Mari glanced back at the road and nodded. “Let’s go.”

The alleyway as short, dead ending in a service road that let the stores receive their shipments without having to deal with the main road’s traffic.

“Okay, it’s staying…” Mari paused. “No, it’s going down.”

David stared at his and nodded. “It just dropped, but…” He took a step to the right. “And it went back up.” He looked up at the fence and frowned. “Mari, shine your light here.”

“What is it—oh.” Mari stared. “Someone, cut the fence. Did they go into the irrigation ditch?”

“But they did it so that nobody would be able to see it. Not unless they checked.” David glanced over at Mari. “Does that sound like The Man With the Bags?”

“Not unless he got a lot smarter…”

“Yeah,” David said. “Hang on,” He gripped the fence and pulled the cut segment to the side.

“David, let’s not get arrested.” Mari said, glancing around.

“Give me a second… Well,” David reached down and pulled up an open tin. The sensor beeped again. “Empty tin and its at .95.”

“So a hungry AE?” Mari asked.

“Or one that leaves footprints,” David said. He pointed down, and Mari hissed at the small bootprints in the dry bottom of the ditch. They trailed off down to the west, vanishing into the tunnel.

“What do we do?” Mari asked.

David stared. “You know, this ditch ends in the river, but there isn’t much water in it right now, so…”

“We could go there and check to see if someone came out that side,” Mari said. “If they didn’t…”

“We know they’re living in the tunnel,” David finished.

“And… what do we do then?”

David looked at the shorter girl. “We do what your movie heroes do. We explore the tunnel!”

“David?”

“Yah?”

“Most of my movie heroes who explore dark tunnels die.”

“Well, we won’t do that part,” David said. “Let’s go. We still have time before our parents start getting worried.”

“Yeah,” Mari agreed. “Wouldn’t want them to think we were chasing strange people with high aetheric levels down, now would we?”

“That’s the spirit,” David said.

With that, the two friends headed back to David’s car. David glanced at the alleyway one last time before he got into the car. I really hope this is a good idea.

On the other hand, it beat hell out of printing documents and changing the filter on the coffee machine.”