Secure Connection

"I'm going to The Keepers for supplies, I'll be back in an hour. If you can't come to a conclusion by then you're hopeless."

She said it with as flat of a tone as ever, which was just typical for her. She thought of herself as Backer's unspoken second in command but she really wasn't, she was just too sensible for such a useless argument.

She knew her worth, the others didn't.

Liam stuck her tongue out at her as she left and screamed at the shut door with blind rage "That doesn't help ANYONE".

"So you're just gonna act like you're not the reason it got out of hand in the first place?" 

"Mimimi, out of hand mimimi" He replied in a high pitched voice, pinching and unpinching his hand to mimic a blabbering mouth

"Lin" Nate nodded "just admit it was your fault and let's be done" "Um yeah that'd be cool" Said Liam, who loved talking

Lin unfolded her arms and stood herself up, "I'm not the one who tied the knot. That was you", she pointed at Nate. He refused to look at her, disgusted.

"I'm not the knot guy, I'm never the knot guy."

"Then how come you were the one tying the fucker?!"

"I Wasn't...?"

"AJ, you saw Nate tying the knot right?"

Liam gasped

"How dare you! Leave poor AJ out of this..." he folded his arms "honestly, it's such a shame you won't just admit that maybeee just maybee it could've been your fault."

Lin sat back down "Because I know it wasn't." (Why did Yemi have to leave me with the boys...?)

Lin's attitude changed like the weather. She would like to be mature but she never was, her senses were more of a performance than of any place in reality. 

"I didn't see what happened." AJ didn't turn to face any of them, "please leave me to my work."

"Oh poor guy... Anywho back to bickering YAY!" -"In quiet."

"This isn't bickering, this is important. Very important. What do you think Yemi's going to say when she comes back and we're still on this?" Said Nate, finally thinking for the first time that day

AJ ever so slightly turned his head, implying himself to be looking at them while refusing to put in the effort of actually doing so,

"Is it Yemi you have to be worried about?"

And in that single, perfect moment, the room was finally quiet for the first time in hours.

Backer.

What would Backer do when she learned about their catastrophic mistake? The three traded stares to one another in silence. Not a word was spoken, but you could read their faces like books. Lin was concerned, but not ready to make it obvious, sweat smeared her face paint but her expression was otherwise unmoved. Nate's mask covered most of his face, but his eyes told enough of a story. The spikes on Liam's back were all pointed upward, which was a tell for something but no one had any real clue what it meant.

"Lin's fault!" Liam lowered his spines, folded his arms even more, and faced the wall. "Crazy idea, but what if you three started looking for solutions to the problem instead of bitching?" AJ was always blunt, not the smartest but certainly the most mature of the four.

"We couuulldddd.... We could..." Liam floated about the room, Lin tapped her finger against the table repeatedly, Nate wandered in place. "We could kill the guy! YES! YES!"

With each 'YES!' Liam did a double fist-pump.

"We don't know who he was."

"If we don't know who he was that's just objectively a good thinggg I feel like? Because then we don't know if he's going to tell anybody, maybe he's a loner! Or maybe he's mute!"

"Not mute, he cried for help."

"Shhhhh Naaaate Naaaaaaaaaate shhh be quiet..."

"You make me so angry."

Lin stopped tapping her finger and started picking at her skin, Liam flew close to her face "Ooooo do you think she's thinking? Nate? Nate? Do you think she's thinking?"

"Lin are you thinking? Lin?"
"Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Lin Li...

AJ slammed the knife he was sharpening into the softwood of the table, the sound echoed off the walls.

"I'M SO GLAD THE ROOM IS QUIET RIGHT NOW."
"I LOVE YELLING!" Liam waved his arms in the air without any care for AJ

AJ pinched the ridge of his nose, "are you sure the guy even saw the corpse?" "Yes" "you're sure he didn't just see a bunch of fuckin' weirdos with weapons and think they were brandishers?"

There was silence again, except this time it was occasionally interrupted by a drawn-out 'um' from Liam.

Brandishers are zombies capable of wielding weapons, surely something worth screaming about... But would it be worth that much screaming? Lin began tapping her finger again.

Nate sat on the table with his legs folded "I feel like if he thought we were brandishers he would've been yelling about it as he ran"

AJ raised his brow "was he yelling... Anything?"

Liam zoomed to the centre of the room and began loudly mimicking the screams of the man "BLEEHHHH AAAAAHHHH! HELP! HEELLLLLPPPP! HELP ME! HELP! AAAHHH!"

"...So um yeah nothing helpful." The ghost held his hands behind his back sheepishly

He tugged the knife from the workbench with a sweat. "Hmm, maybe Yemi was right. Maybe we are hopeless."
"WE! WE WE WE YOU SAID WE! ONE OF US!"
AJ played with the blade in his hand, "Well yes, Backer taught us to respect one another like a family. We're supposed to help one another, supposed to get through this awful, muddied world together, see it all through. Is this pointless argument really what any of you think Backer wanted when she gave us all this opportunity?"

AJ was just as bad for it as Yemi, a preacher.

Lin stopped tapping.

"Family fights sometimes."

"Aww we're like siblings...!" Liam pinched his own cheeks "and Nate is the fat ugly dad!"

Lin tensed up and resumed fidgeting, shamefully. Nate frowned at Liam, then realized something.

"We ARE bickering! ... Ok ok, AJ is right, we aren't getting anywhere right now, solution time, don't get distracted."

"Liam did it."

"LIN." The two yelled, Liam doing so while pointing at Lin as to move the blame to her, and Nate doing so to keep her on track.

"Doooo any of you lot remember what the guy looked like? Cuz my eyeshite is shite." Liam removed himself from the discussion successfully.

AJ, Nate, and Lin spoke between them. He definitely had dark hair, that they could agree on, but between the adrenaline and the man's glasses they couldn't agree on what his face could've been. Lin thought he had a prominent chin while Nate insisted he was wearing a scarf that covered his chin. The three remembered his voice perfectly but it wasn't like that would help in finding him. What were they going to do if they found him? Kill him like Liam suggested? Any idea of  Liam's is a bad one by default, so definitely not. 

"Hey yeah hi I'm bored can I join the conversation again? What are we talking about?"
Nate's face probably turned red, not like anyone could tell "THE GUY, LIAM."
"Yelling is cool. Literally just kill him I don't see what the big deal is, wait I just remembered we have to find him to kill him um never mind carry on"

Lin traded looks with AJ and Nate, "can we exile Liam?"

"I'm right here." Liam pointed to himself

"Can you be right there?" Lin pointed to the door

Liam flopped his head downward and rolled his eyes "Whatever. It smells like feet in here anyway." Liam always poked fun at Nate for his age (despite only being a year behind him), the foot smell thing was part of that on-going joke. Whenever Liam wanted to get away from Nate he would tell him he was leaving because he smelled like feet or socks.

Liam flew through the door and off to who-cares-where

AJ scratched his wrist, "hey Nate did you even drop that corpse near the hotspot?" "What corpse?" "The one. That the guy. Saw."

"...Definitely." Nate lied successfully