Thea was a young inexperienced Journalist fresh out of University in Cardiff. She stood at 5ft 3 and had silky strawberry blonde hair that ends halfway down her back. She had been interning at a news station for over a year now and had been looking for a big story that could land a full time job in Journalism. Her old tutor Victor Wilson, a tall man who stands at 6ft 7 with a full head of greying hair, told her on her last day in class that he overheard one of the advanced science tutors talking about working on a device that can shrink objects to the size of a child's doll. Intrigued by the story she asked Victor who he heard say this and he told her that it was one of three. The first Scott Mason, a young professor and new to the University, he is an averaged size man at 5ft 10 and has recently had a daughter and named her Faye. Logically he was working on this machine to make unique toys for his daughter. Second is an older man named Gavin Wilson, 5ft 6 and has been teaching at the University the longest. He has always kept to himself, only really talking to the other science professors. Third is a man called Pete Stephens who stands at 6ft 3, and not too much is known about him. He isn't a loner by any means. He's always talking to students and other professors; he just directs conversations away from his personal life.
One by one she set up quick interviews with each person and took note of any irregular movement, eye contact, and/or breathing. She finished her third interview and each time they were finished and she looked over the notes she took she found the exact same result. They had no idea what she was talking about. She left them alone after that and got on with her internship, in her spare time she dug up anything she could find on each of the four, she was counting Victor as being in on it given that he was the one to tell her about the story. This went on for a month until she found that Victor every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday would go to the same warehouse at 8:00pm and would always leave very early in the morning.
Realising this pattern she knew she needed to stakeout the warehouse on the upcoming Friday, which was two days away, and she knew she would need a photographer to help her. She got her phone and called her friend Ashley, a thin tall girl who stood at 6ft 3 with short dark hair that rested nicely on her shoulders, she spent the last three years studying film and photography at the University and she helped Thea out on her projects multiple times. Ashley agreed to help out if Thea could offer payment. Thea only had £200 left in her account, which is why she needed to get this story in order to have money left in her bank after the next load of bills came. Thea asked how much and Ashley replied with a number Thea prayed it wouldn't be. "Seeing as how I'll be there for about 10 hours in a cramped car then I'll need a large sum to pay for all that time. So for my time it'll be £10 an hour, and to insure my equipment that'll be an extra £50 an hour, seeing as how you're my friend I'll give a half off discount, that brings it to..." She paused as she did the math in her head, "... depending on how long we are there it should be between £210 and £300. Sound good?"
Thea's heart sank; she was being charged every penny she had. Reluctantly she said to Ashley, "Okay. I'll give you £150 when we first get there, and the rest after were done. Deal?" She asked trying to put on a fake smile.
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Friday came and Thea drove up to Ashley's house at 6pm and they had a friendly hello, Thea handed over £150 and Ashley climbed in the car with her stills camera and digital camera. They drove for an hour and a half, catching up on each other's lives and Thea filled her in on the story on the way. "Okay, so I got from a source that someone is working on some kind of shrink ray, I tracked my old tutor here as he has connections to a lot of people who would know how to make one of these. Tonight he should arrive at about eight O'clock and we just then need to wait for him to come out before going in ourselves to see what's going on in there." Ashley listened and was really excited about this. The two of them had been on stakeouts in the past and they always had some fun while doing it. They even worked out a method of watching the needed area, while not looking at all. But I'll get to that later.
They arrived at the warehouse thirty minutes before Victor and Ashley took this time to attach a clamp to the passenger side door while the window was rolled down, atop this clamp she placed her digital camera and plugged an adaptor into the cigarette lighter so the camera would always have power. She then inserted a 60gb SD card into the camera and set it to take a photo every 60 seconds. She then took out her stills camera and laid it in her lap waiting for the opportunity to take photos for Thea.
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The time came and like clockwork Victor pulled up at the warehouse. Thea ducked down as Ashley began zooming in with her stills camera and took photos of Victor as he walked up into the building. She zoomed in on the mechanical, 4-number combo lock and noted down the numbers "8-3-4-7" he stepped inside and Ashley gave the okay for Thea to get up.
They sat for 3 hours and talked about all kinds of things as they watched the warehouse. It was weird when they first did this, but now it was like routine for them. Ashley would talk about what movies she had seen and gave Thea a little review, then talk about upcoming films and guess how good or bad they would be. She was on a rant about how there are too many Superhero movies nowadays when the warehouse door opened and out walked Victor carrying a bin bag and he took it to the large bin that sat on the streets. Ashley took pictures of him all while he was outside. Then when he was back inside Thea opened her door and grabbed her phone. While setting it to vibrate she told Ashley, "If he comes out again call me."
She closed the door and quickly moved to the bin. She opened it up and was thankful that it didn't smell too bad. The first time she did this she was with a bin bag from a restaurant that had 3-week old raw pork, expired cheese, and some unrecognisable food inside. She likes to forget about being covered in all that stuff in her hunt for her story of the restaurant dosing their food with drugs to get people addicted to it. The story as it turns out was false so that was all for nothing.
Once inside the bin Thea ripped open the thin plastic bag and routed through all the dirt, take-out boxes, broken glass, and thrown out food until she got a call from Ashley. He was coming back out with another bag. In a hurry Thea dug underneath the rubbish, cutting her left hand open in the process. Her back was still showing, but her hoodie fit so loosely on her that it looked like someone had just thrown it out. The bag fell on top of her; luckily there was nothing heavy inside. When he was gone again Ashley told her and she began digging into the second bag. Inside there was a lot of cardboard and bubble wrap. She dug deeper and found a small vial of some green liquid.
Feeling accomplished she dragged herself out and jogged back to her car where she handed the vial to Ashley to take pictures of. Ashley took note of the blood on the vial and asked if she was okay. Thea said it was just a scratch as she grabbed the first-aid kit from the glove box. She cleaned the wound and wrapped a bandage around it to stop the bleeding. She then opened the boot and took out a small gym back.
Thea closed the boot and ran into an empty alleyway where she stripped down to her underwear and changed into a tight white shirt that hugged her body nicely and yoga pants that showed off her tight arse beautifully. She slipped on her running shoes and got back into the car after putting her now dirty clothes in her gym bag and into the boot. After being covered in rubbish on her way home so many times, she always makes sure to bring a change of clothes.
After she got back in the car a thin man walked up to the bin and jumped in. Thea watched as Ashley took pictures and they could see the cardboard and bubble wrap being thrown all about the place. He was looking for the vial. "Ashley, give me the vial," Said Thea. As soon as she had it she opened the tray under her car seat and hid it away.
