The Conspira-theory

The englewood article debut as an underground pamphlet, but elizabeth needed it to be much more than that. True, the article had worked wonders within the resistance movement: it brought an almost unquestionable legitimization to the movement, which had been pelted with doubts ever since the lift of public censure and downright bombarded since discovery of Lokton. However, as an underground publication it was preaching to the choir. Ever since mr. martin and the nilbmah press began brainwashing the people and especially since the tsunami of nationalism propelled by the threat of war, underground publications lost at least 64% of their credibility. No up-standing citizen would give more attention to elizabeth’s article than to the “light of way” literature hawked about by the new way zealots in citadel square. Unfortunately all the certified publishers were just as wary of her article as the up-standing citizens.

elizabeth had almost given up on the englewood investigation after Lokton. When nilbmah first declared war on LusciousLocks, elizabeth knew the englewood death was a scam but good god did martin do a skunk’s job of covering the tracks. Everything was checking out. isabel’s land-lady had been about to file eviction for missed rent and abandonment; the library patrons spoke fondly of the youthful energy she brought to the old building and her vanilla mouse cookies that she brought on Thursdays; nosy neighbors of the englewood estate had seen a car parked in the drive one night around the time isa was said to disappear; mrs weatherwood, who had the misfortune of identifying the body, reported that even with all the horrid torture wounds and bullet holes that disfigured her body (which by the way were one million times more frightening than the post’s article made them out to be), it was clear as day that ms. englewood was the poor victim; the old nighline resident who discovered the body while hiking the woods confirmed that he had seen the woman walking with a man into the woods around the englewood estate about the time she was said to go missing. Everything held up the post’s tale of a nilbmahian librarian who took a weekend trip back to nighline only to be captured by LusciousLockian forces when she went walking in the countryside of her estate. After being tortured, she managed to escape but only after being shot three times in the back. Finally, she crawled back into nilbmah but died in the woods just outside of nighline. And then the news of Lokton broke and it really did seem like isabel englewood was the war’s first victim.
And that’s when elizabeth got dropped into a mayonnaise jar of malaise. She was only 81% sure of the resistance. She didn’t have any next steps. She let herself watch TV that wasn’t the news. She stared at her laptop screen without doing anything. Even “the reds” album didn’t pump her up. She slept in until 8:30 AM. But then she broke into jacob’s apartment.

elizabeth broke in at 1:45 PM when she was sure jacob would be at work and his cleaning lady would fail to see elizabeth slip in as she carried her flock of buckets and sprays down the stairs. The target was his personal laptop. After a week of videotaping every room in his apartment from the building across the street, it wasn’t hard to find in the hidden drawer in the desk in the den. And copying everything from his laptop onto her laptop was just as easy. marquis laven "1", the head director of scientific invention at mobile 9, had made her a computer copying device that looked like a normal lti cable connector except it had a massive tumor growing in the middle of the cable. marquis said the tumor housed programs that slipped past all of the other laptop’s security and allowed it to be copied onto the other laptop. He had invented the device specifically for the resistance and it worked like a charm. With jacob’s newborn twin laptop in her bag, elizabeth put the original back in the secret drawer and closed it just so it slide back into its hiding position. That’s where she would put the bomb. But not yet. jacob was proving too valuable at moment.

Before elizabeth left, just to be mean, she clogged his toilet and stole his can opener.

With the help of marquis, she found everything she needed and more to pull her out of the mayonnaise malaise. On the computer, labyrinthed away, were files and legal documents that elizabeth and marquis pieced together to see the two isabel englewoods: the mother and the daughter.

The original isabel died nearly 20 years ago in a car crash in nighline. Her death sent the rest of her family into a grief that literally killed them. However, unbeknownst to the rest of her family, while she was in college she had a daughter that she sent to an orphanage and named isabel englewood. And as it happens sometimes, the young isabel grew up looking almost exactly the same as her mother. elizabeth double checked jacob’s records with the orphanage’s record and the old director. Both confirmed the theory. Finally using the map of the nighline cemetery from jacob’s computer, they too found the englewoods’ graves and they found isabel’s body missing. Somehow jacob had figured all this out and used the body of the elder isabel to frame LusciousLocks.

This evidence was good enough for her underground exposé but she needed something more objective for any official publication to publish it. She needed a DNA sample from the body in the morgue to compare with the DNA samples in the two isabels’ national identification files (highly confidential files which she had access to via her brother’s political connections). All she need was a DNA sample to pull out the conspiracy from under martin and his fellows. This could change the national tide for the resistance movement. They needed the DNA.

Considering all of her other hoists, getting into the morgue shouldn’t have been difficult and everything was going smoothly. She successfully entered the building with nathan wishmacher, the leader of one of the first resistance groups to fuse with elizabeth’s following. elizabeth preferred solo missions but she would need another person to manually pull out the body box after they overrode the security system with another one of marquis’ special hacks. So nathan came too. They had just activated the hack in the computer system that controlled the body boxes and the lights went out.

1. marquis laven was one of elizabeth’s most trusted supporters. He was the first person she talk to about joining the resistance movements, but that’s a story for another day. And yes I just used a footnote. What.