WHO: Lilah & Casey. WHEN: April 24th, 2019, mid-afternoon. WHERE: The old cell blocks, Sing Sing prison. WHAT: Lilah gets lost and finds a Casey. RATING: PG-13, tops. STATUS: In progress.
It was official. Lilah was lost. Only a little bit, of course. Smart people like her didn't get super lost. But... the vents at Sing Sing were a complete maze, with little logical order outside the newer cell blocks and very few ways to get outside the walls. That was probably for the best, when it was a prison-- it made sure nobody could use the vents to break out-- but it was very inconvenient when you were trying to find an exit. Which she was trying to do. And which she had been trying to do for the past twenty minutes now. In reality, "a little lost" was probably a gross understatement.
It was a good thing Lilah didn't always live in the real world.
The vents were a nice break from the plethora of work she had to do. Her brain was starting to hurt from analyzing so much data, and she still had no idea how to reliably control a large fire. Not only that, she didn't really want to. It might hurt innocent people and that was something Lilah was extremely uncomfortable with. But she knew that if she didn't help, they'd do it anyway, and it was potential for more people to get hurt. Her job was to make sure as few people wound up injured as possible, which helped assuage her conscience but didn't really do much for her motivation. It couldn't be said that, for all her ambition, she wasn't good at dragging her feet when it came to unpleasant activities.
Her little expedition was also proving a good distraction from the whole Casey situation, which had her utterly befuddled. They were friends, right? She didn't understand why he hadn't come to visit the lab or see her in her office or anything. They'd barely talked since he'd gotten to Sing Sing, and she combed her memory for things she might have said to make him uncomfortable or scared of her. Had she asked some personal question unintentionally? She didn't know, and not knowing was bugging her.
Unfortunately, her eyes were starting to water from the years of dust that had built up, and she really needed to get out before she started sneezing. It'd ruin her whole "being stealthy" exercise and she figured hearing random squeaky little 'achoos' from the vents would freak some people out. How did ninjas keep themselves from sneezing, she wondered, as she made her way towards the light filtering in from one of the side vents.
It wasn't until she reached the vent cover that she realized there was a problem. A rather large problem, actually. The screws were located on the outside of this particular vent, which meant the screwdriver she had in her pocket was essentially useless. That left her with only one option: force.
A few hard kicks later, and gray-smudged Lilah (who still had no idea where she was) came tumbling out of the vents in a cloud of dust; coughing and giving squeaky little sneezes all the while.