Seeing Double (RP Thread for Geist)

[Papa Bear]

Seeing Double

An individual RP thread for Geist

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It wasn't Alsworth's fault. He was helping her, but he needed to pay the bills so hadn't devoted a whole lot of time or energy into investigating her murder and a 'dead woman' really didn't have many means to acquire resources to pay him. He'd recently picked up a 'good gig' that further impeded his free time that he could have been helping her. She understood... yeah, she understood but it was so frustrating. That's why she was pretty excited when she gone to see him recently and he actually had some news for her.

He went to his filing cabinet and pulled out a manila folder and handed it to her. Quickly she opened it up, expecting to see the photograph of the man who shot her but instead was greeted by lines of text on various pages. She had been an administrative assistant at the real estate company, Morley's and was not stupid. In fact, she was pretty smart! But at this particular moment, she did not want to sift through legal documents and bills of sales. She stared back up at Chester Alsworth and he must have seen the incomprehension on her face because he began explaining that after she disappeared, he apartment and belonging were seized and most of what she had was auctioned off to compensate various companies that she owed or that had done the work of cleaning away her life. It had gotten him thinking about where the rest of her stuff went; what happened to it. At first, he'd hoped to find her research and maybe be able to put 2 and 2 together and get some leads as to who her killer might have been, but it turned out her stuff was put into storage and would be auctioned after 6 months... there was still 2 months left before that would happen.

However, shortly after her stuff was stored 4 months ago at West End Storage, a company purchased the storage facility. That wasn't too alarming except that he'd never heard of Starlight Limited. When he was a cop, he'd known just about every business in Sovereign City and Starlight just didn't sit well with him so he researched into it. It was a shell company, owned by another shell company that was owned yet by a further shell company that was finally owned by Morley's. That couldn't be a coincidence, could it? He didn't think so, but he had paying work to do and gave her the papers to do some investigation on her own. After all, that's kind of what she did when she did her podcasting.

Well, here she was now at Morley's, or at least the massive building in which the Morley's main office was located. It was night and the building was on night lockdown. That didn't mean that people couldn't get in and out, they just needed ID and pass by security. She didn't have ID any more but she had something better... her ghosty powers. Yes, she could turn invisible but she didn't think she could stay invisible going all the way up to the 70th floor of the J.P. Morgan Chase building. Sure, she could fly up to the 70th floor but really didn't want to be seen flying around the building and phasing through into it, plus a large number of people inside that could see her. Nope, definitely a night job. She looked around quickly. Once she got up to 20 feet, the street lights that light the sidewalks would not shine on her and she'd be practically invisible in the darkness. Then she could just fly up and slip in the side of the building and hopefully no one could see as she had yet to master the art of phasing through solid objects while being invisible. So, nighttime it was and he had to hope that Clarence, the night janitor was vacuuming the room she went into... assuming he still worked there.

Security cameras wouldn't be a problem, she'd learned how to short out electronic devices, especially relatively simple ones that didn't have some kind of shielding... now that would be just her luck if she couldn't short out the security cameras.

Eleanor took a deep breath as she readied herself to take the 'plunge' into the Morley's offices when... what the heck was that? Was that her diving into the offices. No, no... that couldn't be... it had to be someone else... someone who could also fly, at the 70th floor of the J.P. Morgan Chase building walking through the walks into the Morley's offices. What the...?

Edited April 22 by Papa Bear (see edit history)

[RedRajah]

...the HELL?!

Eleanor blinked. Not that she needed to do so anymore, but it was human instinct.

OK, this is clinically [MEEP]ed up...have I done this before? Is that what I'm seeing? If that's the case, how come I don't remember doing it then?! I'd be waving to myself or something... When in doubt, blame time-travel shenanigans (Mental note -- find an unoccupied house I can watch "Doctor Who" in next month...). It made as much sense as anything. Besides, the OTHER option was that this was some sort of doppleganger -- and, according to her late great Grandma Jo, if you saw your doppleganger, that was a sign you were gonna die.

And I'm already dead. So there's that.

Eleanor followed in after her ghost clone hallucination, steeling herself to go through the wall and then readying herself to turn invisible afterwards.

[Papa Bear]

When Eleanor gets through the wall, she sees nothing. No ghost her and no Clarence. It seemed no one was in the office working late either. That was good but she didn't really expect that in a real estate company.

Well, OK then. Morley's had purchased the storage facility that her stuff was moved to, which might not mean anything except that it was purchased through a series of shell companies. Which also might not mean anything but there was a big coincidence there and maybe there were files that might clear up if it was just coincidence or some how related..

[RedRajah]

Eleanor wanted to breathe a sigh of relief when things appeared to be all clear.

Except, if she DID see some sort of Weird Evil Time-Shifted Twin DoppleGhostClone earlier, then there was a Good Chance she ALSO shifted to invisible. ...craaaaaaaaaaap...

No time to worry about that. Go find the files on this Starlight Limited and see what their plans were for West End Storage -- and IF they were connected with her claimed stuff...

 

...or her murder.

 

[Papa Bear]

Where would you like to start? There's a file room where hard copies are stored... could take some time thumbing through the files, even if they are all alphabetized. The computers, but its likely her passcodes have long since been wiped from the system. She had been an Administrative Assistant to a Mr. Howlsy and knew his passwords... if they were still the same and, actually, if she could remember them from several years back... eeps. Was there another way to gather that information? Maybe...

[RedRajah]

Right...what was Howlsy's password again? He liked racing. NASCAR, that sort of crap. Tom Petty? NO! Richard Petty, but he didn't use the guy's first name. A nickname..."Dominator"? "Eliminator"? No, that was the other dead guy... Eleanor coasted over to Howlsy's office, quickly popped back into visual, then walked through the door. She then immediately winked back into invisibility as she carefully turned Howlsy's computer on. GOT IT! "KingPETTY~43"...

The familiar soft click of the keys as she punched in the password brought a sad smile to Eleanor's ghostly visage as she remembered her workin' days. And then she was in...

(INT roll down below...)

Edited April 27 by Papa Bear (see edit history)

[Papa Bear]

gah, I should have told you to make an INT check to remember. Sorry

[Papa Bear]

Gah, that wasn't the password. She was sure it was. She could have sworn it was kingPETTY-43... no dash? Nope, KINGpetty-43? Nope. BossPETTY-43? Nope. OK, this could take forever... and of course there was the possibility that after she was let go, he had to change the PW anyway. Yeah, that was probably it. The PW was kingPETTY-43 when she worked there but not anymore.

OK, where were those filles? That part of her brain was fine with that and she opened up the door into a room filled to the gills with filing cabinets. Quickly looking over the alphabetizing she find the filing cabinet with her name and starts sifting through the files. It takes a few minutes... a lot of minutes... the computer would have been so much faster. When she finds her file and pulls it out, something catches her eye and she turns her head to see 'herself' again, her head whipping to the side as if she heard a noise out in the lobby of the office. She then takes a folder, holds it tight to her chest and drops down through the floor. The last thing Eleanor sees is 'other' Eleanor look up at 'real' Eleanor with a surprised look on her face. Did she just see you? Did you just see yourself? What the heck was going on...

*DING* The elevator 'dings' as it arrives at the office lobby. Since Morley's office takes up the entire floor, there is no hallway for the elevator to stop. Someone is coming straight into the office!

---

OOC: Also, you deleted the cool RP

[RedRajah]

What the ever-lovin' [BLEEP]?!

If Eleanor was still alive, she would have blamed being over-worked and probable lack of sleep. But seeing her Clone/Hallucination/Future Self (so far, this last was what Eleanor was leaning towards) AGAIN was not something she could just brush aside. Of course, with the sudden arrival of Someone (At this time of night?! SERIOUSLY?!?! Can't be a coincidence...maybe it's another Me? Nah, that'd be ridiculous...) Eleanor had More Immediate Problems.

Which, to be fair, could be solved by turning invisible. Which she did. Though, even as invisible, Eleanor still tried to duck behind a large potted plant anyways. Every instinct she had was SCREAMING at her to just leave. But because someone was coming Here, out of all the floors, that was too much to not check out...

[Papa Bear]

Eleanor crouches down and sees a blurry person through the frosted glass windows throughout the office complex. There are two people. She can now hear muffled voices when the door to the file room opens. "...just inside here. One of my old employees I had to sack back during the pandemic." comes the voice of the son of her old boss, Logan Morley. He and a person Eleanor doesn't recognize enter the file room.

"Why isn't the file in your office? In the safe?" comes the other voice.

"We have a file on all of our clients and all of our employees, past and present. If someone went looking for Ms. Wrigley's file, it can't be missing now can it. Besides, everything is on the computer. No one goes into the hard copies anymore these days. And nothing that you want is digitized." Logan replies.

"I guess there is nothing incriminating, unless you know what you are looking for." The other says.

"Exactly so." Logan replies, a sly grin on his face as he turns to the filing cabinet where Eleanor found her file, the file she was holding to her chest with her arms. "Hmmm. Now where is it?" Logan Morley stops cold. "It's not here."

"What are you talking about?" the other growls then pushes Morley aside and goes through the files himself. "Where the hell is it?"

"Perhaps it was misfiled. Maybe someone pulled it by mistake."

"You better find that file, Morley."

"I will, its somewhere in the office. It has to be."

"It better be."

"I'll have the girl scour the files as soon as she gets in. She'll find it."

"How often are your files misfiled?" the other growls, demandingly. Morley doesn't reply. "If someone is onto this, Morley, I'll have you burned. Figuratively, then literally." the other says, turns and storms out of the file room. Morley runs his fingers through his hair before slamming the file cabinet drawer shut.

[RedRajah]

Nepobaby?! How does HE fit into my death?! Was he cloning me? Is that why I'm dead?! Who's the Other Me? And who's this Other Guy calling the shots? To say Eleanor didn't have any respect for Logan Morley would have been an understatement. But the other guy was the actual mystery here. If he ever popped into the office when she was still alive and working, she couldn't recall.

 

It was tempting -- so VERY tempting -- to scare the ever-living CRAP outta Nepobaby, maybe get some answers that way (not to mention indulge in the fantasy every working schlepp had about Stickin' It To The Boss). But Eleanor knew where Logan lived and could traumatize him later. It was Other Guy she needed to know more about. A name, an address -- hell, even a freakin' license plate for Albright to look up.

Follow him. But just enough to get something concrete to look up for later. Then we read my file!

Still invisible, Eleanor trailed after Other Guy...

 

[Papa Bear]

Nepobaby (that made me laugh as I didn't know what it meant until I spoke it out loud a couple times, then got it) paces angrily back and forth a couple times then, as Eleanor slips from the room, slams the filing cabinets in a tantrum.

The other guy gets into the elevator and starts going down.

(You have plenty of options in following this guy with Eleanor's power set; how would you like to proceed?)

[RedRajah]

With the elevator going down, Eleanor phased through the now-shut doors and invisibly followed after the car. Sure, she could just fly outside and wait for the guy, but what if he had some sneaky sub-sub-sub basement exit to sneak out of? Or a secret floor she didn't even know the building had?

OK, do we have some kinda embezzling or insurance fraud going on here? 'Cause I KNOW I would have found out about it when I was still alive! It would have been the BEST first episode of the podcast! That would have been a perfect reason to have been murdered...if only Eleanor actually DID know about anything nefarious! And it STILL didn't explain the Other Her literally floating around here... And what's this guy's deal in wanting MY file?!

[Papa Bear]

Eleanor follows the man down to the ground floor and out of the elevator just behind him. He walks out of the office building and to a limo parked in front of the office complex. The car takes off and 'miraculously' hits all the green lights as it makes its way to the Lincoln Bridge and across the Atherton River. Eleanor slowly loses ground, falling ever behind as she struggles at her top speed (about 30mph) while the car slows occasionally but speeds up to 35 or 40 miles per hour. She is falling farther and farther behind and as the car gets to the outer West Havens heading toward the Grant Experimental Sciences Facility it speeds up considerably, disappearing in the distance. However, unless the car turns off somewhere and she couldn't see the light (which might have been easy to miss with the other lights she can see as she tries to focus on the lights of the car), she believes the car drove into the facility.

It is a very large complex, probably covering half the space of the Financial District. There are tall chain link fences with razor wire over the top... but that can hardly stop her. There are many large bay doors. Many. The car could be parked in any one of them... or none of them.

[RedRajah]

Rich enough to not have to drive himself...yeesh! Eleanor couldn't believe the luck about hitting every green light -- hell, even Alsworth couldn't probably pull THAT off.

Arriving at the Grant Experimental Sciences Facility took her by surprise though. Other Guy didn't seem like a scientist. But even scientists and researchers might have to bow to some sort of CEO bigwig. Lessee, if I'm a lazy-ass rich dude, where would I park? I'd park closest to my office so I wouldn't have to WALK so far. And it's night, so I don't need to make an entrance where the peons have to snap to attention ASAP when they see me. And, BECAUSE I'm a Rich Dude, I wouldn't have my office near where they're doing any smelly and/or loud science stuff...

...

...

...yanno, there could be an easier way to find this guy.

A mischievous smirk crossed Eleanor's face as she flew over the fences. It was a long shot, but one thing Eleanor was pretty sure of was that a facility of this size would HAVE to have followed the appropriate building codes.

Such as having a fire alarm. One that she could safely activate with her TK while floating outside...