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────012, off the deep end.
IT'S EARLY MORNING WHEN CLEO FINDS HERSELF BACK AT THE CHATEAU with the others, keen interest captivating the group with their newest addition to help in the search for the Merchant.
With the sun not quite hanging at its highest point in the sky, the air was much cooler than it had been, a relieving blessing in disguise as they gathered on the dock outside of John B's home. In the near distance, looming along the horizon, were darkened gray clouds that Cleo couldn't interpret as being threatening just yet, hoping they would simply pass over Outer Banks. The drone itself that they had worked diligently to borrow from the salvage yard, and nearly lost their lives in the process, seemed complicated as is to Cleo even before Pope had assembled it together━━because Pope, after all, was the only one who could make it work. They had left him alone with the contraption backed away in two metallic cases (one of which, Cleo would later realize, was the drone itself and the other containing a monitor that connected wirelessly to the drone's feed and a set of intricate looking buttons and keys that controlled it, as well as a tablet programmed with coordinates out on the seabed) for at least an hour, letting him tinker with it soundlessly as he tried to decipher it.
At some point, he had seemed confident in his endeavours, prompting John B to put the drone in the water so that he could figure the workings of how to maneuver the drone from the control panels. In their zealous excitement, John B and Kiara had hopped into the water of the marsh, upon Pope's request, to make sure the drone was moving accordingly, and that the camera itself still worked. Fortunately, from what Cleo could tell, the exorbitant cost of the drone must have been worth it because Pope seemed rather pleased with his test trials. Then again, Cleo had only been paying half-attention, lounging out on the dock beside Pope and JJ with a book in her lap (still Hemingway, of which she had shoved into her aged medallion yellow Kanken backpack before leaving her home), the pages fluttering in the zephyr breeze that rippled across the march and gentle waters. The bickering voices off JJ and Pope, and the latter boy's occasional mumblings to himself as he worked, drifted in and out of Cleo's awareness until one point when she glances up from her novel to check in on the group again.
JJ has now joined Pope's side, glancing over his shoulder at the monitor. On the screen is a seamless recording of John B who is currently under the cerulean waters of the marsh, his face pressed up close to the drone's camera. He flashes a thumbs up, though it goes unnoticed by JJ and Pope.
"What's this right here━━?" JJ is asking curiously, reaching out to touch an array of buttons on the keyboard of the monitor.
"Don't touch that," Pope admonishes sternly, smacking the boy's hand away at once. "I'm trying to work out this thing."
