Sparks

Chapter 18

"And then she said that she got ice cream! Ice cream! With your money!" Jacob laughs.

"Well, it's not like it's the end of the world. Besides, we can't expect her to not get hungry on a full day patrol."

"It was your money and you gave it to her for emergencies."

At this point, I snort and add something to the conversation against my better judgment. "I was desperate for ice cream, does that count as an emergency?" Jacob bursts out laughing from where he's sat at the table. "Oh, and I also got some candy."

"What kinds?" I hold up the bag.

"There's gummy skulls and some chocolates-"

"What kind of chocolate?"

"Two kinds of mint chocolate and some dark chocolate covered orange jellies."

"Hand over one of each of the mints." I do and he takes a bite out of one, a peppermint patty covered in dark chocolate, and then the other, milk chocolate and mint something layered. "These are both excellent. For future reference, I like nuts in my chocolate."

"What kind of nuts?"

"Any kind of nuts." I snort.

"That's nuts." Carrie sighs.

"Nut jokes aside, did you see anything out of the ordinary? Any potential problems?" I stop laughing and put the bag on the table, then I sling the backpack on the back of my chair.

"No I didn't. Though I haven't been to that city before, so I wouldn't know if anything was different." She nods, deep in thought.

"Good. How far did you get?"

I shrug. "I honestly have no idea. I'm actually quite shocked I managed to get back to where you were picking me up." Jacob perks up. He's currently got one of his hands in the bag of candy. As he talks he pulls out another chocolate.

"There's a tracker on the backpack. It'll show your path and any time you stopped for more than a minute."

"Excellent." Carrie claps her hands together. "Let's go upstairs and you can show us." I start upstairs first but then stop as Jacob calls out to me.

"Hey, we need the backpack, go get it. I've got the candy." After a swift detour to collect my bag I continue upstairs with the two others following hot on my heels.

Jacob sinks into his chair in the tech room. "Alright. Hand me the backpack?" I do. He pulls out the camera and rummages around underneath in a box for a few seconds before pulling out a cable and attaching it carefully first to the camera and then to the console. A loading screen shows up and he types some commands into the machine.

show:attached-recording1-startbeginning

It would appear that this video is when I was riding in the car with Carrie. The camera shows an excellent view of my feet and vaguely I can hear our voices.

"Hey, Carrie, what state are we in?"

"Mostly solid, why?" She starts laughing.

"Oh, I forgot I said that. That's awesome." Jacob sighs and shakes his head, but I can see that he's smiling.

"Alright." Jacob clears his throat. "I don't think you guys want to watch several hours of what you already did in real life, so I'll just skip forward half an hour in the video to see how the camera did." He presses a few buttons and it makes a small zzt noise as the picture warps to when I think I'm about to get out of the car.

"Cool. I'll see you later, right here." There's the sound of the car door opening and then the camera gets thoroughly jostled and then the video seems to be moving backwards away from what's in front of it. Carrie facepalms.