Issue 1 Downtime

Ashlie is sitting in the common room, watching TV and changing the channel roughly every 0.1 seconds.


((open))

Mars collapses into a chair, sorting through her mail.

"Morning," Mars says to Ashlie.

"Good morning, Marcie."

"Do you want to watch?" she asks after a moment, unsure if she should slow down.

Mars smiles, "Don't worry about me, Ash. I don't want to get in your way. Just enjoy your shows."

"Okay!" she smiles and keeps flipping through the channels. "How are you today?" she moves on in ehr mental smalltalk checklist.

"I'm doing alright," Mars says, "How are you?"

"Alright. A bit bored, but that happens a lot."

The mail was mostly school notices and news that, for some reason, people still insisted on printing up on brightly colored paper. One envelope though was addressed to her with no return address and no postal mark of any kind. The flap was even sealed with small piece of tape rather than properly sealed.

Mars frowns and starts to open the strange letter. Hoping it's not poisoned.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Mars says.

Inside was a simple folded sheet of paper with a high quality image printed under the words "Do You Know This Person?" The image depicted a much younger Natalya in some sort of suit launching ice at some sort of mansion.

"No no, it's not a bad thing. It's kind of neat sometimes, actually."

Mars frowns, studying the picture.

"You like being bored?"

"Sometimes, sure. You don't?"

"I hate being bored," Mars says, "Hey, what can you tell me about this?"

Mars hands Ashlie the photo.

She takes the picture and runs an image recognition algorithm on it to try and determine the location.

It took a minute, but the picture matched images of the Westchester campus of Xavier's Institute from nearly twenty years ago.

"This is a picture of Miss Romanov wearing some kind of augmentation suit attacking Xavier's Institute in Westchester, New York about 20 years ago."

"That's....really specific," Mars says, looking at the picture again, "Thanks."

"Why would someone send you this picture?"

"Hell if I know," Mars lies, "Maybe someone is trying to screw with me."

Mars crumples it up in one hand.

"Do you think someone is trying to warn you?"

"About what?" Mars says, "Something Natalya did twenty years ago? Kind of late for a warning."

"That is true."

"I'm going to find who sent this," Mars says, "They need to learn some boundaries."

"Do you need help with that?"

"Are you sure you want to help?" Mars asks, standing up, "I'd hate to interrupt your boredom."

"Good point." she says, apparently serious. "But it's not as important. I can bored some other time."

"So, how would you go about figuring out who sent this?" Mars asks.

"We could check for fingerprints. Or security footage from the mail delivery."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Mars says.

"You don't want campus security to know about this?"

"I'd prefer to take care of this myself," Mars says, "I don't want Natalya to worry about it."

"Okay. I understand." she lies, not really understanding it at all. "Let's try to access the security files then." she says, getting up.

"Okay, but fair warning," Mars says, "I'm not really a...computer person."

"That's okay. I am!" she smiles and they head over to the computer lab.

With ASHLIE's access, she had no trouble getting the security footage from the day's mail delivery to the common room. Compared to the previous days, it looked like the normal campus staff handling the mail. He brought the container of mail and unlocked the face plate of the boxes and started sorting mail into them. Part way through, they saw him take the envelope in question and look at it. He flipped it over a couple of times as if inspecting it and then, somewhat stiffly, he put it in Mars' box and went back to sorting the rest of the mail as if nothing had happened.

"That's weird," Mars says, "Do you know who that guy is?"

"Yes, he delivers the mail. So we need to figure out how the letter got into his bag."

"Plus, when he was brainwashed," Mars says, "'Cause trust me, I know brainwashing when I see it and that guy definitely fits the pattern."

Mars had a bad feeling about this.

"Are you sure?" she asks, replaying the clip so she can look at it again.