He couldn't believe it. What were the chances that the inventor of cloud nine would be sitting just a couple mere feet away from him. It was almost too good to be true, like someone was raining luck down onto him. But while the excitement built within him, the dread filled her. Her once warm demeanor remained cold, and she sat at the table like she was wearing the word guilty on her forehead.

His body stilled as he waited. Everything in the room seemed to have quieted down, like she was given center stage.

"I won't bore you with the details. But, let's just say that in the past, I worked with an underground agency." She said, looking down at her arm and flexing it out. Her tattoo out for him to see clearly. "That's where I got this, as you've pointed out."

He looked down at the intricate lines that formed on her arm. Unlike the man that they had caught, it was exactly like Uriah's. From the wings to the arrow, everything was the same.

She continued, her finger tracing around the lines as words swarmed around her mind. Trying to figure out exactly what to say. "When I came up with cloud nine, I was trying to map out a chemical makeup that my employer produced." She smiled a little as she remembered how excited she was then; a feeling that was short lived. "It was never meant to..." She said looking up at him, frowning again. Unable to find the correct words. "I was just curious."

He looked at her with complaining eyes. Why couldn't she be more blunt? She had no trouble doing just that earlier. This was just a bit more annoying to work with.

"But this isn't my fault." She said half-hardheartedly, like she didn't fully believe it herself.

He nodded and went along with it, even though he wanted to roll his eyes. It was clear to him that she blamed herself, but at least this gave him a new opportunity. "So, then who's fault is it?"

She frowned, wanting to defend her position more. "I had a partner." She said slowly, her hands splaying out in front of her nervously. "I knew that she had some selfish tendencies. But I thought I could trust her at the time." Her hands clenched together as she looked down at the table. Her eyes heavy from the memory. The array of feelings she felt then, didn't dull as much with time as they should have.

After a moment a soft humming disrupted the silence, prodding him to speak. She had been quiet for way too long. Her eyes dull as she stared down, like she was getting pulled deeper and deeper from reality. A soft patter rolled into the kitchen distracting him from his endeavor, and then an orange and white ball of fur bolted toward the table; jumping onto her lap.

The orange and white cat was the trick to snapping her out of her thoughts, as it gave her some support against her tsunami of stress.

"She got fired." She looked back up at Jacob her eyes filled with pain. "She took all of my notes." A heavy breath. "All of my research." The fur beneath her fingers gave her a little bit of comfort. "I knew that it was only a matter of time before my work was going to pop up...or a version of it."

Jacob tapped his finger against the wood of the table. "So this isn't the same 'cloud nine' you created?"

She shook her head. "I'm afraid not."

"How can you tell?" He asked, intrigued by the development in the case.

She pointed at the photo laying on the center of the table, going against the animals protest as it called to her annoyed. "The color is different." She said simply. "The one I created was a light shade of pink. That's how you know it's stable. This color is more hot and dark." She handed the photograph back over to him before she continued petting her neglected feline.

He looked at the photograph closely. She wasn't wrong; the color wasn't anything close to being a light shade. "Meaning?"

"That they put a chemical in it that's setting it off balance. That's what makes it dangerous."

He folded his arms onto the table. Even though they had been having a hard time finding the drug. There was no evidence that it did anything unusual to the human body. "Could you explain to me how it's dangerous?"

She bit her lower lip musing over his question. She knew the answer to his question, but he wouldn't understand the severity of her answer. "You're just going to have to believe me. If cloud nine isn't stopped then, well. Then life as we know it could end."

He arched his brows. He would be lying if he said that he didn't doubt what she had been telling him. Especially if she didn't lay out all of the facts. He could be walking into a trap. Although he severely doubted it. But what was left that she wasn't telling him? What didn't she want him to know? He sighed when he realized that he didn't have anything else to go on. Hope was his only lead. So, he was going to have to trust her as best he could...for the moment anyway.

He asked her the next pressing question on his mind, something she might be able to answer; even if it was a slim chance. "Do you have any idea where your old partner is?"

"No."

Nothing.

He leaned back into the chair, the wooden support cradling his back. It felt like he was hitting a dead end.  It sucked. What he thought had been a golden ticket was really just pyrite covered plastic. Sure she had added more to the story, but she wasn't helping him further his search.

But then, out of the blue he heard her sigh heavily. "But I know how."