Duskwood: Love's Beginning

4 - Jake

I pulled my hood up, put my head down, and started the voice-altering software. Then I called Jayna.

She had to stop asking so many questions and just focus on the problem at hand. I kept it short and to the point. Don't worry about me, worry about Hannah. She said she wanted to help, did she not? I asked her to trust me. And she said she did. Whether she did or not, I couldn't care less. She just needed to do her part.

I told her she would be assisting me by decrypting the files in Hannah's cloud storage. I informed her that she should send each file to me when it was complete. Then, more questions of course. I was beginning to wonder already if I had made the wrong choice when she asked me why I did not just hack Hannah's cloud myself.

The insolence of this one, implying she was doing my work for me! I cannot possibly do everything myself. One last reminder for her to be discreet for safety's sake, and I exited the chat to get back to work. After sending her the link to the cloud and some simple instructions that any idiot should be able to follow, I went back to my task of data mining.

Faster than I thought, she sent me the first file. I had to admit that I was surprised by how quickly she learned the system, especially for someone with no appreciable coding or programming experience.

The file seemed unhelpful, and I told her as much. She certainly had an attitude about that. But I was not communicating with her to make friends.

I was ready to log off when she stopped me. What was this? She wanted to talk to me, about me. I had no time for nonsense, and if she thought she could trick me, she was sorely mistaken. For both of us, it would be best if she knew nothing about me.

But it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to me like a human and not a means to an end. So I would give this one minute and see where it went before I cut it off.

Then, I found myself actually enjoying the inane conversation. Even worse, I asked a question of my own. It was so cliche. But I wanted to know what she would bring to a deserted island.

Her answer: books. As in paper? Well, this one didn't seem to spend much time on the internet so maybe she was a shy bookworm who sat by herself reading all day and night. How it was possible that someone so gorgeous could be by herself, I did not know.

Then she mocked me for wanting to bring a computer to a deserted island with no electricity. I suppose I walked into that one. Well, it's my imaginary deserted island, so it can have electricity if I choose. She caught me unawares once more by saying she would join me on the island.

I was almost starting to picture how it would be on an island with her. I went back to her social page to look for more pictures of her when I realized my curiosity was getting out of hand. Time to go.

But she stopped me yet again with another perplexing question. "Don't you wonder who I am?" she asked. I would call her psychic if I believed in such things.

And I found myself babbling on about things I should not discuss. That I wondered about how she fits into this mystery. I even admitted that I wanted to know who she was. I'd said more than was safe. Finally, I closed the faucet that was my mindless typing.

"Thanks for talking," she said before I logged out.

"Thanks to you, Jayna," I muttered under my breath, shaking my head. I liked that too much. I could not let that happen again.