Two days after his arrest, Jacob was glaring at the wall, scratching it with his chains as best he could. If they were going to lock him here, he may as well vandalize the place while he was at it. Unfortunately, the walls were too hard and thick for him to dig his way out. Even if he'd been able to, he wouldn't get far.
His blood boiled quietly at the shit he'd been through. First Light Master interrupted his attempt to capture Jase's girl, then his Miracle shut off, allowing said girl to overpower him and knock him out. If he'd been able to keep his Miracle, he wouldn't have gotten caught.
What the hell had happened? He couldn't stop the same thoughts from spinning around in his head and it made him furious.
Furious enough that when Ferry showed up again halfway between breakfast and lunch and ripped out the camera, he almost strangled her.
"Whoa! Put down the chains, bucko!" she snapped, glaring at him from behind her mask. She held the remains of the camera in front of her like a shield. Not that it would do much of anything.
"What do you want?" Jacob growled.
"I'm helping you, jackass," she spat back. "Angel wants you back with her."
Jacob growled. The only reason Angela wanted him back was because of this damn Miracle. What would happen when he lost it?
She'd probably toss him back in prison and throw away the key.
"Why are you helping us?" Jacob asked warily. Ferry tossed the camera on the ground and stomped on it for good measure.
"You're going to help me, actually. We're forming a temporary partnership. I get you out of prison, you help me heist some files from the Military, we both get copies of them and you get to go home. Win-win, right?"
"Why'd you break the camera?"
"So nobody eavesdrops on us. If they foil us, we're both in hot water."
"I don't have a choice, do I?"
"You do. Help me out with this or stay here to rot. Up to you, really." Ferry crossed her arms and gave him one of her enigmatic smiles.
Not really a choice, then. Jacob sighed and rolled his eyes, then held out his hand.
"Fine. Just for today."
"Great. What happened to you anyway? I watched the footage on the news and you really didn't fight back at all."
Jacob's face twisted in annoyance.
"Hell if I know. My Miracle quit working. From the looks of it, so did Light Master's. Dunno about the girl; she would have had to turn off her Miracle to suffocate me anyway."
"The girl had a Miracle?"
"Yeah. Mist or whatever she calls herself. Enemy of ours. Angel wants nothing more than to catch her and rip her to pieces right in front of that traitor bastard."
"Huh. Y'know, if you gave me more, we might be able to help you catch her. My boss has connections."
"What would we owe you? No thanks; I won't decide anything that might make the Angel madder at me than she already is."
"Fine," Ferry said with an exaggerated pout, then grabbed Jacob's hand. "We're gonna teleport to the First Division General's office. If the files are anywhere, they'd have to be there."
"Wouldn't that be super secure? Even if we get in, won't everything be heavily password protected? What kind of files are we stealing anyway? First Division doesn't do anything."
"So many questions," Ferry teased, leaning forward with a grin. "Answers'll cost you."
"Fine. I don't wanna know. Let's move before they freak out about the broken camera."
"Aye aye!"
With that, the cell disappeared and Jacob found himself in a sparsely decorated office, still holding Ferry's hand.
"General's in a meeting for the next hour or so. Trying to protect his precious funding. But would you mind taking out that camera just in case?" Ferry pointed to one in the corner and Jacob obliged, sending a chain towards it that wound around its base before he yanked it out of its socket.
"You sure know a lot about this."
"I said my boss has connections." Ferry gave him a wink and skipped over to the computer. "Now let's see here. Fingerprint scanner included. Of course. We are talking about something so top secret that not even the general himself may know about it."
"What the hell kind of files are these?" Jacob asked, glaring at the door.
"I said answers'll cost you."
"Fine. What do you want me to do? If you could do this alone, surely you'd have done it."
"Yeah. Come over here and stick your fingerprint on the scanner."
"It won't open for me. You know that right?"
"Just do it."
With a sigh, Jacob obliged. Sure enough, the computer beeped red as Ferry tried to log in. As it declined, though, she jammed something in a USB port and the computer let her in.
She quickly navigated through the files, getting Jacob to put his fingerprint on the scanner whenever she needed to get through a biometric lock. For some reason, the computer was happy to accept him now.
Finally, she found a folder buried deep in the network, one labelled "Underwing". It had been behind so many passwords and fingerprints Jacob wondered what the heck it could be about. Without a word, though, Ferry stuck a USB stick into another port and copied the whole file over. Then, she pulled that one out and copied the files onto a second stick.
"There. That oughta do it."
"This was sure easy," Jacob commented.
"You have no idea how much time Twin's spent preparing for this. He's been trying to develop a way to hack into top secret files for ages now. This happens to be his magnum opus. And, better yet, you helped me by giving them your fingerprint. So now they'll believe you're the thief."
"Wait, you're putting all this on me?" Jacob asked, glaring at her.
"They have your bio info anyway since you were locked up. What's one extra charge on top of everything you already have? Want me to list them all off?" Ferry leaned towards him, grinning. Jacob felt sick. She reminded him of a cheerful Angela right now.
"Fine. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Don't need to tell me twice!" Ferry pressed one of the USB sticks with the files into his hand. "Good luck to your team on the deciphering."
Without another word, she grabbed his hand and they were in some alley.
"Nice to work with you, Mr. Hinton. I'll be heading home now. Safe travels!"
With one last wave, Ferry vanished and Jacob rolled his eyes in annoyance.
He really should have checked if Ferry was actually acting on Angela's orders. For now though, he'd just hope she'd forgive him for everything when he came to her with these top secret files or whatever they were.
Underwing...
What could possibly be worth so much security in a First Division computer of all things?
