Troop’s mom had denied him the privilege of leaving Parkland for the rest of the week. So far, two days had passed since his first mission and already he was growing restless. With nothing to occupy his mind with, Troop had returned to the habit of thinking of all those “what ifs”.
What if I had hid the crutch instead of Kristi? What if Kristi had returned sooner by one minute? What if I had listened to Kristi in the first place and searched the pond for the trapdoor instead of arguing against her? What if….what if….what if….
“You okay?” Finn asked.
Troop realized he was clutching his head; he probably looked like some whacko experiencing major head pains. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Finn slid him a side-ways glance, but didn’t say comment any further.
“Do you need help with whatever you’re doing?” Troop asked. “I don’t think I can suffer through another hour of sorting instafications.”
“I guess.”
Troop knew he would probably be more of a hindrance than help to Finn, but he needed something to do, something not as tedious and dull as sorting through messages again. Finn was just being nice for agreeing to let him tag along.
“What are you doing?” asked Troop.
“Just repairing some electro-slates.”
“Is it easy?”
“Depends on what type of repairing needs to be done.”
Troop followed Finn to the repair room, where two other members occupied the room. One of them happened to be Jane.
Jane briefly looked up to see the new arrivals. “How’s it going?” she asked.
“Good,” said Finn. “Troop’s helping me with some of the repairs.”
Jane placed down her tweezers and picked up a tiny screw. Troop watched her carefully coax the screws out of the electro-slate one by one.
“Let’s go to station three,” said Finn.
He pulled out two chairs and gestured a stack of electro-slate sitting on the table. Troop counted a total of twenty-two slates. Finn plucked the top-most electro-slate off the pile consulted the repair submission on his own electro-slate.
“This one got left besides a fire for too long and isn’t able to connect to the internet,” said Finn. “My guess is that the receiver got damaged from the excess heat. Do you know how to locate the receiver?”
Troop shook his head.
“Here, let me show you.”
At the end, Troop ended up doing all of the easy tasks while Finn did the all the stuff that required actual skill and knowledge in the technological field. Between the two of them, they finished within two hours. Troop suspected Finn could’ve gone through the slates a lot faster without him, which was why he declined Finn’s offer for him to help him and Nick program a new software that was supposed to process videos faster.
Walking down the hall, Troop paused when he passed by Tiffany’s office. She was talking with someone else and he had heard his name pop up a few times. Troop strained his ears and eavesdropped on the conversation.
