#/* Also: I go with the 2.0 theory that Dillinger Sr. was the CEO of fCon/behind the data wraith project etc. */

[not-that-dillinger]

"Ah." Ed could understand not selling the place. It's what he should have done years ago with his own house when his exes left, and found somewhere smaller, but... he liked the quiet of Altadena and the trails into the San Gabriels that practically started in his backyard. ...And perhaps he had hoped some day he wouldn't be quite so alone, even if the thought of having a family of his own terrified him.

"It's not... conventional, but it's quiet, and you don't have to pay rent or a mortgage, which is certainly helpful," he observed. "I can see the sense in that."

Ed turned his head in surprise when Sam shouted to the dog.

...Oh. There was a hidden space behind the Tron machine.

He would have followed Sam out of intrigue, if he had time to think, but admittedly, his reason for sprinting after her, socks muting his footsteps but causing him to slip and have to focus on balancing so he didn't fall on his face, was pure instinct and years of having to scramble to put out Mackey's metaphorical fires every time there was a situation. And this, certainly, was A Situation, even if he wasn't sure what the situation was.

It's only when he reached the bottom of the stairwell that he had time to process that the hidden room behind the Tron cabinet was a creepy basement that was definitely giving him Edgar Allan Poe vibes, like he was either going to walk into a dead body in the room beyond, or he was about to become the spirit that haunted the building.

What he found instead was a literal nightmare.

He skid to a halt barely keeping from falling on his ass, face pale and every muscle in his body going rigid at the sight of the computer-desk in the corner. The last time he'd seen that machine, he'd been four, in what now was Mackey's office. Certainly, he shouldn't have remembered that desk except for the fact that it and his father's disembodied voice coming from the machine--from a program that was somehow even meaner and scarier than his father-- had given him nightmares until he was in high school.

Or for the fact that as far as Ed knew, to this day his father was still furious about losing that desk.

The sight of the laser at the other side of the room, pointed at the chair, didn't help, either, though he quickly realized it was immobile. That was a small comfort.

He would have grabbed Sam and the dog, and dragged them both up the stairs, except his body refused to cooperate.

"Sam..." he said, his voice thin and brittle, and barely audible. "Please tell me that malevolent program isn't on that computer," he all but pleaded.

(Combining: GUEST :  for one muse to offer the other a place to stay. STORM :  for both muses to find shelter from a severe storm. Same universe as prev Ed and Sam rp?)

Sam had been tucked away in the basement of The Arcade, coding on The Grid’s terminal, so she didn’t hear the sound of the rain right away. When she did however it snapped her out of her trance. A jolt of slight panic coursing through her. The bike!

She raced up the stairs, pushing away the TRON machine she had moved back into place behind her so that Marvin didn’t wander in when she was working, and raced past the other covered, but no longer dusty, cabinet machines in the arcade till she was at the door, swiftly unlocking it. She paused under the covered threshold of the entrance when she saw just how much water was falling out of the sky. That was definitely one hell of a storm.

Well. It’s not like she was going anywhere anytime soon.

She flipped her hood up and walked out to the street towards her Dad’s… well her, Ducati now, kicking up the kickstand and grabbing onto the handlebars to walk it under the covered threshold. She lifted her head up when she heard the shuffling of feet and some splashes nearby. At first she didn’t recognize him through the rain until he got a bit closer. She lifted one of her arms, waving it slightly as she called out to be heard over the pounding of raindrops and howling wind.

“Ed! Hey! Over here!”

She rested the Ducati against the wall, still waving with her hand as she held open the door of the arcade to invite him inside.

@iamnoprogram

It was one of those days where Ed couldn't go home. One of the days where he was afraid of what he might do if he left his thoughts to wander. Usually he would stay at the office and code until he passed out at at the keyboard, but his meeting with Mackey earlier that day had been... it had been a lot of things, but certainly not good. Draining, mostly. And for reasons Ed wasn't quite sure of, it brought up old ghosts that Ed still couldn't put to rest. They were the sort of ghosts that made his office, which was normally a refuge, feel downright oppressive.

He'd hoped that a long walk would exhaust him enough that he could go home and pass out as as soon as he got to bed.

He'd been walking for about an hour and a half when the storm hit. It was one of those rare deluges came so suddenly, and so intensely, that LA's near non-existent storm drainage system quickly overflowed and flooded the streets. The kind he'd only seen a handful of times in the twenty-some-odd years he'd lived there.

Between the dark, and the rain fogging up his glasses, he had pocketed the glasses in hopes of preserving them when he inevitably tripped over his feet, and resigned himself to shuffling blindly back toward the tower and his car.

Not that he had any idea whether it would be better to go home or stay at the office.

He hadn't been walking back long when he heard someone calling his name, though it had still been long enough that he was thoroughly drenched, and shivering mildly from the cold. He froze in place on the sidewalk, having to take a moment to identify her by voice, since he was all but entirely blind.

"...Sam?" he asked, then realizing where he was, and that she was the only person likely to be there. He glanced both directions, and, seeing no lights, nor hearing any vehicles (there rarely were; this part of town had been all but abandoned since he was in middle school), shuffled across the street, navigating toward Sam by voice alone.

"Hi Sam," he said awkwardly, stepping under the eaves. "Uh, thanks," he said awkwardly, hesitantly following her into the Arcade.