Star Light

Thirty-Four: Rescue

If anyone had seen the gathering, they would have found themselves swimming in confusion. All seated on the couches in the living room of the Mikaelson manor sat five individuals. Four were related, one was not. 

Elijah, Klaus, Rebekah, and Kol Mikaelson were all seated and having somewhat of a cordial conversation with none other than Elena Gilbert, the doppelganger. 

"Did you bring anything that could help us with our search?" Elijah asked Elena, feeling slightly odd about working with the doppelganger. When he told her about Europa, he was expecting Elena to go to the Salvatores, not to him and his family. 

Elena nodded and pulled out her sister's laptop, logging in using Jupiter6. Pulling up the security footage, Elena shook her head at how oblivious she was. Her sister would have been working on this for a while and only now was Elena noticing? 

Guilt ate at the younger Gilbert. 

Elijah pulled out his phone and checked his call logs, "I called Europa at about 9:25 am," He told Elena, who typed in the time stamp and switched to the upstairs hallway camera. 

They had about five seconds of footage before the camera went out. "What? No. No, no, no." Elena went through the next five minutes of footage, finding the same blank screen. If she watched the whole house, she saw herself answer the door and call up to Europa before leaving with Elijah. Then a minute later, all of the footage went dark. It stayed that way for about ten minutes until it came back to life, showing an empty house. 

"What just happened? Why can't we see anything?" Rebekah asked worriedly. 

Refraining from throwing the laptop, Elena jumped to her feet and tangled her hands in her hair as she paced, "Whoever took her knew she was paranoid. They corrupted to data. We know when she was taken but there is no other evidence outside of that." 

"Can't we just retrieve it from the trash?" Klaus asked in confusion. 

The group glanced at Elijah who typed away for a moment until suddenly the laptop screen went blue and an animated vampire showed up, "You Lose,"  It laughed, repeating the taunt, never stopping. 

"What is that?" Asked Kol in confusion, "Why is it saying that?" 

"Whoever did this left a virus, it might have even been Europa's virus to keep the serial killer from figuring her out. Either way, the entire computer has been wiped, I would hazard a guess that the desktop and her phone has been too." 

There was a moment of silence as Elena slowly sat back on the couch, and the Originals considered their options. 

"Do you happen to have Europa's hairbrush?" Kol asked. 

Looking up, Elena nodded slowly, "But who would do a tracking spell? Bonnie is helping her mom, and she doesn't want anything to do with Mystic Falls at the moment." 

"We have our witches, Love. Go and retrieve the hairbrush, I'll take care of the rest." Klaus assured the girl.

When Elena got back to her house, she was fully expecting it to be empty. Instead, she found Caroline, Damon, and Stefan, all standing there. Once she came into view, Damon sighed a breath of relief. "Thank god, we were worried you got taken too." Then he crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. "Where were you?" 

"I went to see if Europa was at her usual hideouts. She wasn't." Elena lied. She couldn't tell them that she went to the Mikaelsons for help, they would trap her in the house, again, and then her sister would really be in trouble. 

Nodding, Damon accepted the lie, "Right, well, Caroline is going to stay here for the night, and then in the morning, Matt will stop by to make sure you're safe. Don't do something stupid."