“OK then, maybe it’s best if I give you the tour, then?” said Ayala, looking at Madeline, who nodded, curious and a little wary. Ayala took her arm and led her to the entrance to the basement, Neal running back down the stairs to join them once more. A moment later, Madeline stood at the bottom of the basement steps, even more baffled now as she looked at the messy, dusty space.

“Well, what do you think?” said Neal, stepping past her toward the washing machine in the corner.

“Err, I guess I kind of expected you to have, you know, cleaned this place up a bit,” Madeline said, “weren’t we going to put our computers down here?”

As she watched them, confused, Ayala smiled, somewhat proudly, and Neal opened the washing machine lid, reached inside, pulled something and then grabbed the corner of the big machine. Clearly on rollers, it slid gently out of the way, revealing a rough hole in the wall about three feet high.

“After you.” Neal said to Ayala.

“Such a gentleman!” she said, walking over and getting down on her knees to crawl through the space.

Neal indicated for Madeline to follow, and she did, ever more perplexed.

She now stood in a parallel basement, clearly belonging to the house next door. It was dominated by two things, a line of computers, each clearly hubbed together, though Madeline assumed not connected to any external network or internet link, and several racks of clothes.

“Welcome to our new headquarters, Madeline.” said Neal, as he crawled through after them, pulling on a metal lever next to their ingress that clearly pulled the washing machine back into place behind them.

“But…” Madeline started, before Ayala cut her off, sensing her confusion.

“We couldn’t risk all of us coming and going from the main entrance of Neal’s house, it would be too easy to track our movements, and even easier to link us all together. We are going to need to have some freedom of movement, so I rented the basement apartment off the house next door. They hadn’t been planning to rent it out, but after a few days looking into all your neighbors, both to each side and the house behind, I found a little leverage over these ones which I could use to encourage them to accept my offer.”

Madeline looked at her. Who the hell is this woman, she thought, but after seeing Neal grinning like a boy with a schoolyard crush, she decided to leave that question for later; maybe Barrett would be able to shed some light on the whole situation.