Chapter Text
For all that Jordan was overseas for all of the summer break, it's still only been two months. She wouldn't have thought she would have seemed different or anything.
And yet.
"Holy shit," Michelle says when Jordan and Ziyuan arrive for lunch on the first day of third year. "What happened to you and how do I make it happen to me?"
Jordan doesn't even know what to say to that.
Darren whistles. "You're going to get kicked out of Vet Sci if you show up looking like that," he says. "We're not supposed to be stylish people."
"I didn't..." Change anything, Jordan starts to say, but Ziyuan catches her eye.
"Just take the compliment," she says, in Mandarin. "Lan-er-shushu probably had his tailor go over your clothes while we were gone."
They do feel very... well-fitting, Jordan supposes. And Ziyuan did her hair this morning and it looks disconcertingly good.
"What was that?" Michelle asks curiously.
"Nothing important." Ziyuan clears her throat. "Just to get this out of the way early, Jordan and I are now officially dating. You each get exactly one intrusive question, so use them wisely."
"Do I get to gloat?" Michelle asks.
"No. And that was your one question. Arguably you blew it," Ziyuan tells her.
"Who made the first move?" Darren asks.
"Michelle, and she still doesn't get to gloat," Ziyuan says.
"Are you into threesomes?" Stacy asks.
"And that's the end of that," Ziyuan takes Jordan's hand and tugs her down to the grass. "We have packed lunches from Jiang Ying and Lan Zhan today, so I have plenty of extra food to throw at anyone who still wants to be nosy."
"That's very fair," Darren says. "Hey Jordan. You know how you owe me a huge favour?"
"No?" Jordan frowns.
"Damn. I thought you might have had such an incredible summer you'd think you must have forgotten." He grins. "In that case I want to ask you a favour."
~
Jordan has not, until now, been a particularly active participant in the university's lively social club scene.
But Darren has. In particular, he's been an active member of the Strolling Players - the acting club - and he loves it, and cares about it very much, and disaster is about to strike the Strolling Players.
The committee members who were supposed to run their Orientation Day stall and recruit as many freshers as they could went MIA and didn't, and the club is in danger of losing their allocation of clubroom space and with it, most likely, their accumulated stock of costumes and props and the like if they don't manage a sudden and intense membership drive.
"Can't you just make a bunch of fake memberships?" Chris asks. "Just write people's names on your list?"
"That would be wrong," Darren sniffs. "And also, no. The council get suspicious of late membership pushes and they'll be checking up on us so it wouldn't work. At the very least we need to have, like, twenty or thirty people minimum visibly involved in the first semester play or we'll just lose the allocation mid-year."
"So you don't just want us to join, you want us to be involved," Jordan says, aghast.
"Yeah. Please? We video the production and make copies for everyone to send their parents and grandparents." Darren makes big eyes. "I bet your mother would love to see it."
"I don't think it would be her thing," Jordan lies.
Darren tilts his head. "Hasn't Jiang Ying met your mother? If I mentioned this to him, would he -"
"You bitch," Jordan hisses. She's only ever used that word to Ava before.
Darren looks triumphant. "I've got signup forms right here," he says, digging in his bag.
~
Dear Grandma, Jordan writes.
Thank you for the cheesecake recipe. I'm looking forward to sharing it with the people I'm living with.
Ziyuan is well and says hello, and also thanks you for the lamingtons. We all enjoyed them very much.
You wanted to know about the other people in my drama club.
You always say never to speak unkindly of anyone who hasn't gone out of their way to deserve it. What's the nice way to say that one guy really, really wants us to think he's a vampire?
There's a knock at her bedroom door. "Dinner's ready," shushu says, smiling. "Lan Zhan made tibs."
Living with Lan Zhan is like living with a personal chef sometimes, Jordan thinks, and she's going to have to up her own cooking game if she doesn't want to hate the necessity of eating when she moves out.
"So how was work?" Shushu asks Ziyuan as they eat. He's been on his best behaviour since she moved in, and Jordan and Ziyuan have a secret bet as to how long he can last.
Ziyuan frowns slightly. "Strange, actually," she says. "Jiang-shushu was right, there's something odd happening there. I was going to talk to you about it, because I don't - look, how paranoid is too paranoid?"
Shushu grins. "There's no such thing. What's bothering you?"
"That's the thing. I'm not sure. What's definitely true is that there's something corrupting the absolute shit out of the backup servers. If we needed them they're basically not there. I can't find any software causes, so..."
"So replace the hardware," Shushu says. "Unless you think it's something in the server rooms?"
"Couldn't find anything there, either, but there could easily be things I missed. Where I'm wondering if I'm being paranoid is that I don't want to send the recommendation from my work e-mail address. I was wondering if you could tell Jiang-shushu and have the order come from Corporate."
"Easily," Shushu nods. "Can you point to any reasons for suspicion?"
Ziyuan shakes her head. "No idea. Something just feels off, that's all."
"You'll figure it out. I'll tell Jiang Cheng after dinner."
Lan Zhan doesn't like people having phones out at the dinner table, Jordan knows.
After dinner they have Grandma's cheesecake. It came out almost right.
~
Ziyuan is, officially, just an intern, here for work experience and in no way undertaking corporate espionage. (If it even counts as that, since she's working for Head Office and all.) She's pretty sure most of her coworkers have assumed she's a nepotism hire.
Since that assumption is both useful (because they don't usually expect her to do any real work) and true (there are six highly sought-after, competitive internships on offer every year that quite a few of her classmates were applying for, and this year there is a seventh position that exists specifically for Ziyuan because Jiang-shushu wanted it to), she doesn't really object to it.
She works Wednesdays and Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Currently she's supposed to be assisting with setup of the new backup servers, despite the lead database administrator's objections.
The lead database administrator is Jeff, the guy who should have identified the problem with the backup servers at least a year ago and didn't. Ziyuan is suspicious that he didn't and suspicious that he was put in charge of setting up the replacements. She's pretty sure it has to be either malice or incompetence, even if Wei-shushu says that corporate database management is Like That sometimes. She's not sure which, is the thing, and whether the people with the big corner offices are equally incompetent or equally malicious that they've left him in charge of it.
It seems like he expects her to be a vapid airhead. Ziyuan has started bringing bubble gum to work for the express purpose of either snapping it or blowing bubbles in the most annoying way possible to convince him he's right about that.
A Yu does not waste an advantage.
So far, Jeff has caught and corrected every 'mistake' she's made in the server configs, even the very subtle ones - but somehow did not notice that the RAID array that should be storing the CCTV recordings is set read-only, which should be glaringly obvious, so her suspicions are only growing stronger.
"See if you can set up the rolling backup cycle for the sales teams' computers," Jeff tells her, just as her phone buzzes.
"Sure, just one minute," Ziyuan tells him, and snaps her gum as she picks up her phone.
"You're not even supposed to have that down here," Jeff complains.
"Excuse you, but it's a text from my girlfriend." Ziyuan still gets a little thrill when she says it.
Robert has a new cravat and doesn't want us to put on the show at the Globe because he says if sunlight touches his skin he'll combust
Ziyuan suppresses a laugh. Robert clearly joined drama club because it had the word drama not because he necessarily wanted to be involved in putting on plays, and his commitment to trying to make everyone think he's a vampire is almost impressive. He wears frock coats and lace and goes out of his way not to be seen outdoors by day.
He actually has a job at the same offices Ziyuan works at, but she hardly ever sees him - his job is to monitor the helpdesk overnight in case of problems with the overseas offices.
She sends back: Tell him it's surrounded by buildings and so long as the show isn't at noon there'll be shade...
... or that he could just go crew and not have to be on stage at all
There's no way that guy will volunteer for crew.
Jeff is glaring at her. It's making her skin prickle.
"Yeah, sales team backups," she says, and sets to work.
~
"Party this Saturday, our place," Michelle says at lunch.
Kim moved out this year. Michelle, Darren and Chris are now sharing their house with Jessica.
"Over my objections," Darren grumbles, and Michelle rolls her eyes.
"You don't have to be there if you'd rather go out."
Darren huffs. "But then I'll miss it when interesting things happen at the party."
"So be at the party." Michelle turns her attention to her lunch.
"But then I'll never meet anyone new and I'll die a lonely virgin," Darren complains.
"Virginity is a social construct," Chris says. "But if it's really bothering you I can fix it for you."
"Ha ha." Darren huffs and starts digging in his bag. "Oh for - I left my lunch at home."
"I saw it. I brought it." Chris passes it across.
~
Ziyuan technically has an office.
It meets the definition, certainly. There's a desk just big enough for a monitor and keyboard, a surprisingly comfortable ergonomic chair, and dozens of thick ropes of neatly tied cabling running down the walls.
There is not room for a second person, or even a particularly large person, but Ziyuan can't bring a guest here anyway.
It's three floors too far underground to have a window, but since the only door goes directly to the server room, even with the door closed the air conditioning is a steady cold wind coming through the gap underneath and the hole where the lock used to be.
She's not upset her door doesn't have a lock, because this room used to lock from the outside.
No-one she works with ever actually comes to her office, anyway, even when she does - mostly she works in the server control room, but sometimes she comes to her own little office with the computer that was set up just for her.
By Wei Wuxian, but nobody else knows that other than Sandu Shengshou.
From this computer and this computer only she can access the network and everything attached to it without that access being logged anywhere. She can also access the log files for every system.
It's a pretty intense setup for a room that doesn't even have a lock, except that to activate Wei Wuxian's Sneaky Mode requires activating a talisman that only works for Yu Ziyuan. She had to bleed on it. Because Hanguang-Jun is a very honest person, Wei Wuxian got Jordan to bring a sterile kit back from her Clinical Practice class.
Technically it probably counts as theft - certainly enough so for Hanguang-Jun - but apparently every other department on campus steals their first aid supplies from Vet Sci so no-one's actually going to care about a student taking one kit.
The point is that no-one else should ever be able to access systems without that access being logged.
Which means what she's looking at should be an impossibility.
She set up the RAID array that's supposed to store CCTV recordings. Initially she'd left it set read-only to see if Jeff noticed, but she'd corrected that before she left work that same day. She did, she's sure of that, and even as she looks at the system now she can see that the drives are set for read/write access.
The cameras, when she checks those, are functional too.
But there's missing data in what's actually stored in the drives. Here and there according to no pattern she can identify there are gaps of one to three hours in the recordings.
Her phone buzzes. It's Jordan.
I think either we traded lunches or Lan Zhan is mad at me
Ziyuan thought her lunch was very mild.
Too spicy? she sends back..
It was an adventure
Ziyuan chuckles to herself and returns her attention to her screen.
This is so strange.
Her phone buzzes again. Jordan again.
Everything all right?
Now Ziyuan frowns. Did Jordan want a reply? Of course. Was it a fun adventure? she tries.
Shushu is worried. You're not usually this late
Ziyuan looks at her watch.
It's almost 8pm.
She'd swear she just had lunch, but she's also, she suddenly realises, desperately hungry.
Feeling deeply unnerved, Ziyuan checks the CCTV recordings.
There isn't a camera in her office.
The server room cameras didn't store anything between 3pm and 6pm.
This is getting weirder.
~
Jordan was only mildly concerned when Ziyuan was late home from work.
She's not sure quiet how to interpret the reaction from Shushu until she sees how Lan Zhan reacts, because sometimes Shushu doesn't seem to have a lot of gears in between whatever, ha ha and intense that aren't just variations on intense, but pretending he's not being intense. Often she gauges it by whether Lan Zhan reacts with fond indulgence, concern or equal intensity.
When Yu Ziyuan, still looking slightly pale, tells them she lost track of time for a few hours, this is not received as a light-hearted expression that means she was a bit distracted.
"How many hours?" Shushu asks, frowning sharply. Lan Zhan looks up from where he's reheating dinner for her.
"I think around six. Jordan texted me just before two, and then it was almost eight when she texted about me being late." She holds up her phone. "She also texted me about a cute cat in Small Animal Medicine this afternoon and I don't remember seeing the text."
Shushu pulls out his own phone and starts making a call with one hand, even as he grabs Ziyuan's wrist with the other. A soft orange glow forms around his fingers.
"We need you. A-Yuan is much further away," he tells whoever answers without preamble. "Yu Ziyuan lost time." A brief pause. "About six hours. Her spiritual energy is very low now." Another pause. "See you then." He snaps his phone closed. "Auntie Wen will be here in a few hours," he tells Ziyuan.
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?" Ziyuan looks freaked out. "Auntie Wen is coming here on no notice from - where was she, Qishan?"
"No, no. She's in KwaBulawayo," Shushu says, which isn't a whole lot closer, Jordan thinks. "I'm sure you're fine, but I'd be in trouble if I didn't call her. You know your mother is descended from Wen Ning. Wen Qing is very protective of your family."
Ziyuan doesn't look particularly comforted. Jordan squeezes her hand. She's not exactly not freaking out herself, but she's more concerned with Ziyuan.
Her girlfriend, who is apparently at least potentially unwell enough that Wen actual Qing is on her way.
And who is leaning into Jordan's shoulder, and Jordan thinks she might actually love her love her.
Of the six hours it takes Wen Qing to reach them, it takes four for Lan Zhan to decide he has offered Ziyuan enough different food items that she definitely will have eaten enough tonight.
On a normal Wednesday evening Jordan would have been studying, and then maybe she and Ziyuan would hang out for a while before Jordan, at least, was in bed by one.
Tonight she's sitting on a couch in the living room that she didn't realise existed until Ziyuan moved in and there was some kind of vague encouragement for them to have their private time there instead of one of their bedrooms. Ziyuan is leaning against her, mostly-asleep, and Lan Zhan and Shushu are hovering anxiously.
A glow outside the windows is the first sign that Wen Qing has arrived. Jordan would jump to her feet, but it's three in the morning and Ziyuan is now entirely asleep.
Wen Qing is smaller than Jordan expected, somehow, but she's very beautiful. Jordan remembers that Ziyuan's mother is apparently descended from her brother, and wonders about genetics over the course of centuries because she thinks Ziyuan even looks a little like her.
"Hello. You must be Jordan," Wen Qing says softly. Jordan nods mutely.
She wakes Ziyuan gently and takes her wrist, then frowns and pulls a very bright torch from her sleeve and uses that to examine Ziyuan's neck.
"Wen Qing?" Shushu's tone is questioning.
"She's missing blood volume," Wen Qing replies matter-of-factly. "The bite wounds are almost entirely healed, but I am reasonably confident she has encountered a vampire." The light goes out. "However, I am troubled by the deficiency in her spiritual energy. That is unusual. It is also unusual for a cultivator of Ziyuan's capacity to experience memory lapse."
"I'm not very good," Ziyuan mutters. Wen Qing's eyebrow twitches slightly.
"I said what I said," she says. "Wuxian. Give me access to your computer. I must make arrangements to remain here for a time."
"Yes, Wen Qing."