Michelle Ryker

Chapter Ten: Conditions and Preparations

The first of their requests was simple enough for me to comply with. All Dale asked for was a floor plan of the house the part was taking place at so they could make sure that it would be safe for so many teenagers to be there. Of course, I knew that they were asking for it because they wanted to make sure that they'd be able to secure the premises before everyone arrived. I happily obliged and called up the family contractor right there and then to get the blueprints of the beach house brought to Clarabelle ASAP. While they'd be adding their own security measures to the outskirts of the premises, I also knew that they'd make sure these added measures wouldn't be noticed by those actually attending the party. I wouldn't expect less from two professionals. 

Once that was taken care of DeLano brought up the topic of security. He told me that they wouldn't feel comfortable sending a bunch of half trained spies out for the night unless they would be sufficiently protected from anything that may happen. This was his subtle way of checking out what kind of security measures I had in place so that they wouldn't add anything redundant. I explained to them that the property was heavily secure – my mother had lived at Clarabelle for six years after all and was insane about protecting her loved ones – but they could add a couple of guards if they felt it was necessary as long as they cleared it with the head of security. This just so happened to be Matthews since he was the head of security whenever I was concerned. 

I told them about the cameras on the edges of the property to catch anyone uninvited as well as flood lights if certain motion sensors were set off. I highly doubted that even horny teenagers would walk far enough from the building to set of these sensors as the property was huge. The house itself had enough rooms to keep people out of too much trouble. There was also a security system which I'd set up as open. While it'd allow people to walk in and out of the house whenever they wanted, it would keep track of how many people were in the house at a given time, which entrances and exits were used, and the height and weight of those at the house. Just to make sure that nobody that wasn't supposed to be there was. 

I neglected to mention the facial recognition software that my mother had installed as she'd told me it wasn't exactly legal to have it on a private residence. Especially without letting people know their faces would be recorded. I promised to myself that I'd personally look over the footage from this night to make sure nobody suspicious had showed up. If there was anyone there that shouldn't have been I'd let them both know. Honest.

I had a feeling that they wouldn't have a problem adding extra protection where they deemed necessary.

Their next request caught me off guard a little but it did made sense. Both of them stated the importance of this request but Dale in particular made it quite clear that this was an important one and I had to make sure to follow through or else there would be consequences. They wanted me to keep an eye on everyone and make sure that nobody got drunk enough to let anything important slip about the schools or our society. Not that they were condoning underage drinking at all, they were just being realistic about things. A high school party tended to have these things. I understood that it was all about security and protocol but I hadn't thought about that before she brought it up. Obviously an oversight on my part but I tried to act like I'd already thought of that and agreed to keep an eye on things. It was a really good point and I'd hate it if I was the reason for a security breach so I knew I'd have to be extra vigilant tonight. While most adults would pretend to be ignorant of this fact, I was glad they'd brought it up. Both Dale and DeLano understood what it was like to be a teenager, spending so much time with them, so they were understanding about things like this. 

Related to their third request they asked me to make sure that none of the students from Clarabelle or Baxter got too drunk. Even if they weren't going to let anything slip about the spy life, Dale made me promise to watch out for people drinking to excess. They stated that they understood that teenagers would drink and there was nothing they could do about that but they didn't want anyone to be too hung over tomorrow. There was only so much they could ignore as DeLano pointed out. I had a feeling Dale was going to be more lenient on this one but I agreed to keep an eye out for both schools.