<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><strong>The Black Box</strong></span></div><hr/><br/><div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/JCoNFHJ.jpg)</div><strong>NAME:</strong>Lily Jimenez<br/><strong>DAY:</strong>December 4th, 2020, 11:15 PM<br/><strong>LOCATION:</strong>SOPHE Headquarters, IT Office<br/><strong>TAGGING:</strong>The Invisible Kyless<br/><strong>EXTRA:</strong><br/><strong>WEARING:</strong>Her usual hoodie and jeans<br/><hr/><br/>The search was on. Or it would have been on were it not for a set of distinct popping sounds that Lily had learned to identify with gunfire. It could be that the soldier boys were training, but they had special rooms for that, and IT wasn't near any of them. A few more taps here and there and Annie was telling her about a general alert which wasn't so general as no one had bothered to tell her, or any of the other civilian types about it. Just a general get your asses over here with as many tranqs as you can, and nastier more deadlier arms weren't out of the question. And for all that is good and pure,<strong>DO NOT LET ANYONE NEAR HERE IF YOU VALUE THEIR LIFE</strong>. And Lily could not help but notice that she was nearer to Near Here than most would deem reasonable.<br/><br/>Lily was not a reasonable person, however.<br/><br/>She didn't hear anything. She certainly didn't see anything. But... she smelled... well it smelled like Christmas. Not so much Christmas in itself as the deep tones of cinnamon and chocolate that constitute champurrado, and which, for Lily, meant Christmas in times past. Accompanied, when she perked up her ears in response, to a jingling sound. For a moment, Lily hypothesized that this place had finally gotten to her and driven her batshit crazy.<br/><br/>But all that training hadn't gone to waste. Chief among it was trust your instincts when things seem to go strange. No not those instincts Lily. Why the hell do you have those instincts? Most people were not big fans of Lily's instincts, or how she acted on them. This time though, she trusted the right ones and dropped from her chair, closing Annie just a bit to put a limit on the light stream going out. If on the off chance something was out there, and she wasn't just having a delayed PTSD reaction to reading Dickens novels, she'd have been better served to closing Annie completely, but her dependence on her electronic companion precluded that.<br/><br/>Now huddled behind one of the desks she peered back out towards the scent and the sound, and saw...<br/><br/>Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Lily closed her eyes and did that breath regulating thing Dr. Date had told her about. Maybe she was going crazy.<br/><br/>Or maybe Santa had finally realized what a rotten person she was and had decided to do something about it. In either case, she'd manage. She always did.