by Heather West » Tue Aug 15, 2023 9:00 pm
Heather is sitting in the cafeteria, laptop open in front of her and occasionally poking at what's left of her lunch. Which is mostly steamed vegetables she occasionally brings herself to actually take a bite off. But mostly her attention is focused on the computer screen which is mostly just showing white with a scant few bubbles with only a single letter in them. Specifically A, L, M and m with little bubbles full of notes that look like they're written in some whimsical WingDings font.
Needless to say, she was not convinced by Ashlie's attempt to give Lisette a chance on blind faith alone. She has no solid idea about Lisette's motives, as it is she only knows that she's seen Lisette hanging off of Madison's arm in surveillance footage. Her mother had made her do a lot of that. They'd go on trips, like the one she'd met Ashlie on, and Miranda would not so gently encourage her to look for this and that in the computers around them. Most of the time it was boring stuff but sometimes she'd be looking for her brother and sister, mostly her sister, and usually those were exciting things.
Bad thing, she now knows. Her mother probably hadn't thought Heather would actually spend much time looking at the data she pulled and scrambled but she'd been so bored. Madison almost always was doing something cool so it had been like watching action movies to her. It had been in one of the more boring ones that she'd seen Lisette, but it had stood out because as far as Heather was aware, Madison doesn't really have any friends. Unbeknownst to her, Madison usually kept that part of her life under wraps, but sometimes even obedient corporate slaves assets needed escorting to and from a job.
Still, to Heather being that buddy-buddy with her sister definitely puts Lisette in the 'bad people' category and isn't helped by a vague sense of jealousy. She is the most important person in Ashlie's life, obviously, and here is someone her sister thought was good company showing up out of nowhere. And maybe she would have listened to Ashlie and dropped it there, but it's hard not to look for reassurance when she still worries Madison might one day step out of thin air and take her back 'home'. She had found nothing that convinced her 'Lisette Allaire' wasn't a fake name. And even then, maybe she could have convinced herself, but then Ashlie had come home and the nanites in her body had been singing sappy songs. Nobody is going to take Ashlie away from her again.
Unfortunately, her research so far has not yielded anything actually incriminating, much to her dismay.