On the list of things to bring to their very first surveillance trip, 'so many snacks' was one of the most important. Vex had bought a camera online and finally had it shipped. It had been mad expensive but it was worth it. Now he'd blown a lot of money on said 'so many snacks' because surveillance was boring and eating could alleviate boredom. He had half a mind to just take the van because it was comfortable but they'd ended up borrowing Nic's car since it was much less conspicuous and possibly not known to the facility. The plan for now was to sit there in the afternoon and then come back at night to see if there was any activity after hours. Afternoon was good, most people left work between four and eight depending on how late they worked so they might get a face or two to follow. Maybe they'd follow them today even, just to get an idea for who to send Jane after and where.
"Lem and Vex's day of fun," he said as he loaded up the car, giving Lem a toothy grin. It probably wouldn't be fun but a little fun attitude couldn't hurt. "You ready to be a master spy?" He was going to let her take some pictures with the very expensive camera because he knew it'd make her happy and he liked Lem happy. His only worry was that nothing would be going on there so shortly before Christmas but did evil really ever rest? He thought not. It was worth a look at least.
Lem had been able to puppy-eye Nic into letting them use his car. It really hadn’t been so hard. As much as she loved hanging out with him, she was kind of glad he hadn’t insisted on coming along with them. It was going to be long and boring, and she honestly wanted to spend some time just with Vex. They hadn’t done much together since moving here, and having some mission to take care of as a team was pretty exciting. She painstakingly helped pick out snacks, and she was looking forward to bullshitting the hours away. And hopefully seeing something helpful, of course. Lem tucked a crossword puzzle book into her bag along with a few other things and called herself ready. “I was born ready,” she declared to Vex, grinning back. She hopped eagerly into the passenger seat of the car and settled in, slipping her big sunglasses on.
"Look at all those people we're drawing in," Vex murmured as he started the car and took a few seconds to look everything over. It was so different from the van and it had been a while since he drove anything else. A car was a car though and the basics were the same so he had them going quick enough. "Wait until you meet the preacher, I'm willing to bet he'll bring more people in too. We're like a little army storming the fortress." It was wild and it made him happy, if this was where everything was leading then it all made perfect sense to him.
“The preacher,” Lem echoed, her tone kind of ponderous. She’d heard about him from Vex, but anything having to do with organized religion was surrounded by doubt in her mind. “As long as he doesn’t like, try to convert us or anything. I don’t give a shit about his god.” Maybe that was overly paranoid of her, but nothing good in Lem’s life had ever come from preachers. “We are getting a good group together, huh?” she added, so as not to be a total negative nancy. Lem slouched low in her seat and braced her boots against the dashboard. Big drinks had been part of their snack haul, and Lem untwisted the cap to her soda and took a swallow. “Those fuckers don’t stand a chance.”
Vex didn't know what to make of Mal or what to expect of him. He was intrigued by him at least, a man who'd been through the same as Vex with such a different ending, how could he not be curious? He might prove to be a powerful ally or a danger to them all, it remained to be seen. "He's in for a ride if he think he can convert us," he agreed with a snicker. It could be a laugh or a headache, another thing Vex couldn't predict. "Maybe we'll convert him but yeah, it's a good group so far. Maybe even the squirrely one will be useful but without him we have a dreamwalker on our side and a werewolf to throw in the mix if we get desperate." He didn't think they'd ever be desperate enough to let Carson loose and that would be cruel but it was still kind of cool to have a werewolf in their corner, even if he stayed in their corner all locked up.
Lem gave a thoughtful little hum. “I wonder if like, he could learn to do it on command,” she pondered. “Or if it like, has to be the full moon.” It was probably impossible, and gods knew Lem didn’t want to have to figure out how to wrangle a werewolf, but they had nothing but time today to think about whatever they wanted. “And Zania’s boyfriend can talk to animals, I wonder what he would get from a werewolf.” They didn’t even know what the preacher could do. If anything. The skittish one, Neil, he seemed convinced that he didn’t have anything special about him, but Lem was inclined to think they all did. “How many more do you think we’ll find?” she asked, glancing over at Vex. Lem reached over to nudge his glasses up his nose since he was driving.
That was the first Vex had heard about Zania's boyfriend being able to do that and he made a soft little 'ooh' sound, thumbing his glasses up his nose and giving Lem a crooked little grin. "We need to have him visit on the full moon. Maybe make him a part of the pact. Talking to animals? Think of all the littles spies we'd get. That's at least one more but the final number - it's all unclear, firecracker. Maybe our numbers will grow infinitely, we'll become a global movement, fighting evil corporations. More like though? I'm gonna guess thirteen, just 'cause that's a fucking cool number."
She laughed a bit at the cartoonish mental picture that she got from that, picturing a web of their weirdness just covering the whole earth. That sounded pretty badass, making a global movement, but she wasn’t so naive to think the real world worked that way easily. People were stupid and didn’t know what was good for them, they were too scared of change. “I’ll bet on thirteen, and not hold my breath for the globe,” Lem said, smirking a touch. She took another swig from her soda bottle, squinting out through the front window. “I wonder where their money comes from ... maybe the jumpy dude will end up being our hacker or something,” she suggested. “Librarians know a lot, right?”
"I think Jane is right," Vex said, narrowing his eyes as he tried to remember more details from the few visions he'd had of Neil. "I don't think they would have kept him around that long if he was a dud. Maybe we just need to experiment on him a little ourselves. Poke him with sharp things, startle the fuck out of him." He wasn't all the way serious about it but it made for a funny mental image. The guy was so jumpy already, he'd probably freak out if pushed. Vex thought he needed to chill the fuck out, smoke some weed, get drunk, whatever it took to loosen up a little but he wasn't going to be the one to make him do that.
Lem laughed, perhaps a bit meanly, at the thought of scaring the shit out of Neil. She liked scaring men, it was part of why her whole aesthetic was what it was. Sure, Neil hadn’t done anything to hurt her, but it was best he know his place with them. Plus it might be fun to watch him do something psychic-crazy that he didn’t know he could do and then freak out about it. “I can’t imagine not wanting to experiment myself. Try to like, bend spoons or push objects around with my mind or whatever. Just try everything. He might actually be able to do something, who wouldn’t want to know that? Could save his life one day. If I was more than a conduit, I’d want to know.” The last part came out with a slight pout to it. Lem knew she was important, but it was a passive importance and sometimes that was bothersome.
Vex could relate. His 'gift' more often than not felt kind of useless. What could he do about some random person experiencing some random thing somewhere else? It was never a premonition, as far as he could tell, just a glimpse into some other life, hundreds of miles away. Right now he was seeing it as a beacon of sorts. He was the one who was bringing these people together at last, he would find the missing pieces. It finally made sense. Lem's words still rang true to him and he grinned faintly and nodded. "I'd wanna know too," he muttered. "Have you tried though? Maybe we're capable of so much more. Let's try shit out today, we got time."
“I’ve tried some things ... to like, pull the remote to me so I don’t have to get up, and exploding people’s heads with my brain,” Lem said with a fierce sort of grin. “Never worked. But yeah, we can experiment!” It was as good as anything else to pass the time. It was a little strange to be sitting in a vehicle with Vex that wasn’t the van, which they’d spent countless hours in, but Lem thought it could be fun anyway. Trying to create electricity between their hands or read the minds of the people passing by. In between tossing food into each other’s mouths, of course, since they had so many snacks. “Do you remember anything about it? Being at the place when you were a kid and the experiments?” she asked, looking over at him. They hadn’t talked about it much, but they tended not to talk about things in the ‘real’ world very often.
"Nope, don't remember a damn thing," Vex replied as they made their way out of their neighborhood. He'd had to pull up a map on his phone to figure out how to get to the AIR building but it wasn't complicated by any means so he'd only had to look it over once. Now he knew where it was, lurking just outside of town. Had that been where they kept the kids? Or was there a second location - somewhere farther away. "I think they made us forget - the ones who didn't show any signs of having gifts. I was just a normal fucking kid with a year long gap in my memory. I do remember the cops asking me about it and all the other kids but I couldn't remember anything. That's a fucked up thing to do to a kid. There were others too, kids around my age who disappeared and showed up again, not remembering a damn thing. Like we were swallowed up by black hole and spat back out in the wrong damn time." He hummed, realizing this had turned dark pretty fast but the topic wasn't exactly peachy to begin with. "They were wrong though, about me being normal. It just didn't show itself until I was all grown up.”
It was definitely a fucked up thing to do to any one kid, much less many of them. Dozens. Hundreds? Who even knew. Lem had the vague thought that they should raid the place to find records before they torched it all. It was very cinematic in her head, the two of them with cool welding masks and flamethrowers, just taking care of everything. But any kid who’d gone through that deserved to know what happened to them, in Lem’s opinion. “They woulda been wrong even without the gift, never normal, ooooh,” she said, grinning and reaching over to poke his side. The subject was a heavy one, so she was trying to lighten the mood too. “If they have one of those Men In Black flashy things, I want one,” she added as the thought occurred to her. “And we should track down all those kids and give their files to them.” Maybe Lem was getting ahead of herself, but who cared?
Vex smiled again because being told he wasn't normal was a compliment, especially coming from Lem who meant it as such. "I agree," he murmured at her suggestion. "Nobody should go around with a hole in their memory, they all deserve to know the truth. I hope they still have all those files, that place burned down once before. If they don't have them we'll track down all the people who went missing out here, tell them the truth. It's up to them if they believe us or not but hopefully we'll have blown the lid off this whole thing and the whole world will know."
“Oh, right,” Lem murmured. The first fire had slipped her mind, oops. Maybe there wouldn’t be records to find on everyone, but Vex was right, they had other possible resources. “But fuck yeah, we’ll fuck up their whole universe.” Thinking about it all made Lem feel nicely righteous, like they were superheroes making plans. Dark superheroes. She slurped some more of her soda and watched the town go by as they drove, wondering idly if any of the people just seeming to go about their ordinary lives were secret evil scientists. “I’m sure Nic and Zan would help too,” she said, looking back over at Vex. “Lay some curses down.”
"They're part of the gang," Vex agreed with a smirk. Oh, witch-hexes, those would come in handy. He'd only ever seen the two do beneficial things but who knew what they were capable of if the motivation was right. "Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and something trouble." He laughed. "Thing is, I could see how some people working there won't know shit. We gotta find out who finances this place, who owns it, not just shareholders but real powerhouses. Top dogs. They'll know." The problem with places like this was the secrecy, even if he was still a detective with all the resources behind him, Vex knew how hard it would be to get in.
“Fire burn and cauldron bubble, I think,” Lem said with a grin. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but it was somewhere in her brain. “Yeah, that’s who we need ... but I bet they’re hiding really good, so we need to find somebody who knows somebody, on up the chain.” There were always the peon people who didn’t run anything, but there was always a chain, you just had to find it. That was Lem’s impression, anyway. Hopefully Jane could help a lot with that. It was all going to be difficult, but she’d never expected anything else.
"Now you're thinking like a cop," Vex told her. "Or as a cop should anyway, a lot of cops just go after the peons." In some cases, so had he, happy to look the other way if the money was right or the stakes too high but the sort of corruption he was thinking about now went far higher than his detective rank. It was the people at the top, the money people, the politics people, shaking hands behind the curtains and making deals with the devil. He never would have let someone walk if they were running a human trafficking ring, stealing kids and experimenting on them. Even at his worst, Vex had had his morals. "We're going through the peons, straight to the king."
“And then straight through the king,” Lem murmured. She only had the vaguest ideas about how all of that worked, the upper echelon of crime, but Lem was sure there were shady rich people behind all of this. There usually were, they seemed to be behind everything bad. It might take them a while, it might not be an easy journey, and it might not even be one they survived, but Lem knew she and Vex could make a difference here. They could set some things right, or at least fuck up the wrong things. Content with that, Lem settled further into her car seat and let her head fall back to watch the world go by through the window.