They'd finally sent her over to the other side of the rip. There had been some missions, and it had been a learning experience. One thing that was nice about SUPER, though, was that it wasn't business, 24/7. There was some discretion involved. Downtime between assignments. It wasn't like an office job, or being a police officer... not that she'd ever done either. Really, to her it felt more like being a mercenary that didn't kill. Maybe that was simply how they handled her? Maybe other agents were treated with different gloves. What mattered was this: She had time to do nothing. She had time to burn drinking coffee.

The coffee place was simple, with a casual decor that wasn't kitschy and servers that spoke English (as opposed to calling things venti and grande and having their own jargon for drink composition). It wasn't important to her. She could pick up anything. Social chameleon, that was her. But it did simplify her life when she went up to the counter and ordered a large black coffee, and got no sass. Coffee procured, Lenna sat down as a small circular table near a window where she could see the New York street.

Her eyes dropped to her cellphone screen. No messages about assignments. For the moment, things were quiet. She sat, and she drank.

Lee had been busy getting Rachel's shop ready. It really hadn't been very hard, but it was taking some time to get the place up to her own standards. And on today's schedule was painting, which meant that Lee was actually wearing jeans and running shoes.

But right now, it was her coffee break. Maybe grab something for lunch on her way back, but definitely coffee.

Stepping into a nearby coffee shop, Lee got into the very short line. Had she timed that well, or what? A moment later, Lee ordered, and as she waited for her coffee Lee let her eyes glance around the shop. Only to stop on a face that Lee had seen more often overseas than in New York.

Grabbing her coffee now that it was ready, Lee took a sip as she walked over and stopped beside Lenna’s table. ”Been a long time. How have you been?”

She really needed to find a contact who could change her face. Maybe something prettier? Or plain Jane.

The woman had recognized her, but she hadn't recognized the woman. This hadn't been the first time. Lenna played off the surprise by pausing for a moment, then covering it up with a look of recognition. "Oh yeah! Hey! Been good," She said. Didn't offer much more information. Kept it simple. She'd just have to dig up more about herself as the conversation progressed. "You? How have things been going?"

This world's version of herself had certain friends and contacts. This was one of them. IF more cropped up, this was going to become an issue. She didn't feel like her cover was blown to hell, yet. It wasn't a dangerous situation. It was socializing. But social calls can lead to making new contacts. New contacts can be dangerous, too. It wasn't clear if this woman was one of the dangerous contacts or one of the friendly types. Lenna hated operating in the dark.

Damn alternate world version of herself flying so far under the RADAR it was impossible to look her up on the internet and find out crap like address or relationship status. Otherwise, she would have googled herself to hell and back by now.

It took a moment, but Lenna recognized her. And didn't say much of anything about how she'd been. Though, if Lee remembered correctly, lens never had been one to share a lot of information. Unless it was about baseball.

”I've been getting by,” Lee said with a shrug. ”Nothing as exciting as Columbia, of course, but things haven't been to bad.

“Mind if I sit? I've been on a ladder all morning.” Lee asked, placing her hand on the back of the chair across from Lenna as she waited for an answer.

As Columbia? What did she know about Columbia? Columbia was where Cortez had been. Cartagena. At least, in her version of this reality... in this version, someone else might have been in charge. Lenna kept a straight face, and mulled that little detail over. "Yeah," She agreed mildly. "Columbia certainly never lacks for excitement."

The woman asked if she could sit, and Lenna nodded. "Of course," she said. Took a drink of her coffee. No cream or sugar. Just black.

She idly wondered why the woman would've been on a ladder all morning. So, in a bout of curiosity she asked. "Ladder? What've you been up to? Sounds... fun."

It would have been nice to have a name to refer to the woman by. The lady had her at a disadvantage. Would SUPER care if she just started asking about herself? More and more. It was a great way to ruin a cover and attract attention. She'd learned some already, just not about her relationship with the woman. Lenna felt like a broken record, but the fact that there was a body double of her running around made her uneasy.

Lee cocked her head slightly when Lenna said that Columbia never lacked for excitement. It certainly hadn't while they were there, but Lee thought things had gotten a lot better.

At least they had been better in Columbia for the first few years after they had been there, Lee thought as she sat down.”I haven't really paid attention to news out of there recently,” Lee admitted, a crease forming between her brows. ”Have things hit the fan down there again?”

What had she been doing on a ladder? It had been a rather vague comment, after all. ”I've been painting. Helping my sister open up a boutique.”

It was a shame she hadn't researched this worlds Cortez or this worlds Columbia. On the right side, it meant she didn't have to lie when she answered the woman.

"I haven't heard about anything in particular. Then again, I haven't kept tabs. Been busy with work." She said.

Painting explained the ladder comment. Neatly. Almost to the point where the entire conversation seemed so open-ended a lesser person might have assumed the entire conversation closed. Lenna, however, wasn't going to let a little thing like not knowing a person get in the way of learning more about both them and herself.

Casually, her eyes dropped for a second to the woman's cup hoping to see a name written by a hasty-handed barista. Her name was on her own cup, clear as day. Spelled right and everything, which was shocking in its own right.

"Boutiques are nice. Lot of fashion. One benefit of my new job is that I get to travel. See those things firsthand." Lenna fished for topics. "I love fashion."

She took a drink of her coffee.

Lee just looked at Lenna as she said that her new job allowed her to travel all over. ”I thought we had already done that,” Lee commented with a slight frown at least that's what Lee thought. ”Though, we never really got to go sightseeing or anything like that.”

But Lenna liked her new job with travel because she loved fashion? Lee cocked her head as she looked at the other woman. That's something she wouldn't had figured Lenna would have been interested in. Then again, Lee didn't really know Lenna all that well.

”Well, I don't know exactly when we're going to get the place open, but you're more than welcome to come check out,” Lee said. ”We're over on East 74th St, just a few blocks from the park.”

Again and again, she was left with more questions than answers. They'd traveled together? No sightseeing. Who was this woman who knew about Columbia, and traveled with her? Who knew her and was comfortable enough to walk up in a coffee shop and talk?

Lenna made a noncommittal grunt. Hopefully it'd be taken as acknowledgement and not awkwardness. She was going to have to breach that subject soon, though, or curiosity would kill her.

"Sounds good," Lenna agreed. A thought was blooming in her mind. Hastily, she pursued it before she started second-guessing herself. "Hey, maybe I can give you my number and you can call me when you're all set up. It really has been a while. It'd be nice to reconnect while I'm in town."

She grabbed a napkin from the holder by the woman's cup, and as she did so, her angle was right that she caught a name. The handwriting wasn't great, but it was clear enough that she could decipher an iee. No, wait. Lowercase l. Lee, then. Finally, mystery woman had a name.

Lenna jotted down a number she could be reached at. It was non-traditional. SUPER agents rarely gave out numbers to civilians, even potential sources of information. Not true numbers, at least. They had set her up with a phone for contact and emergencies. It was an old thing that really only served as a phone. It didn't even have a camera. The government could be cheap. She'd have to get an upgrade.

Lenna put Lenna down on the napkin next to her number, and passed it over to Lee. Perhaps SUPER would be able to learn more about the woman from number and name, but her interest was purely personal. It just didn't seem right to have them do something she could do on her own. Especially since she figured this woman's privacy was important to her, and if she knew Lenna and had worked with her, the woman was likely dangerous.

Lee watched as Lenna reached over and grabbed a napkin to write her number on. That was good considering Lee had actually left her purse, with her cell phone, at the boutique, only bringing enough money to pay for coffee.

”I'll have to send you my number,” Lee said as she watched Lenna writing. ”I haven't memorized my new number yet since moving back to town.”

Once Lenna was finished writing on the napkin, Lee took it and tucked it in her pocket.

”Most of what my sister designs isn't exactly my style,” Lee admitted after a moment. ”She uses too many pinks and pastels. But she does do good work.”

It was a pity the woman hadn't had her number memorized. Either she had a landline, didn't know her number, or was clever enough to be wise to whatever game Lenna was playing. For a moment, Lenna felt drained. But then she finished writing and let it go. It was ridiculous to be upset over a minor inconvenience.

In fact, what she really needed to do was either double down on the lie, or risk something. That was, if learning about herself and this woman was actually worth the risk. One thing she could do was try a different tactic.

"Hey... it's been a while. What all do you remember about Columbia?" Lenna asked. Either Lee would talk, or she wouldn't. She might get scared, but hopefully... hopefully she wasn't too pink and domestic.

What did she remember about Columbia? Lee's brow furrowed a bit as she looked at the woman on the other side of the table. There was so much that had happened there, things that both women had known while they were there, and much more that they had only learned after the fact.

Though, Lenna hadn't been in the ‘business meeting’ Slate had held once they got back where he had laid out his entire plan. Had Lenna ever found out everything about Columbia?

”I don't think the contractors ever thought we were of any help building the school,” Lee said thinking back. ”One of the cartels were definitely not happy with what Slate was doing down there. And the empanadas you shared were delicious.”

So, school-building in Columbia. And Cartels were involved. There was someone named Slate. And she had shared empanadas with this woman. Lenna had to briefly consider whether the 'we' Lee was speaking of was herself and Lee, or if Lee were building a school with someone else who Lenna personally had not yet met. Her, Lenna, building a school... didn't jive with her mental write-up of her alternate self. Or her current self, for that matter. The cartels did.

"Cortez, probably." Lenna said. There was some heat in her voice. Personal heat. She'd looked him up, when she'd come over across the worlds. "He doesn't seem to be much of a problem now, though." She said. She almost smiled. Lenna caught herself. It would not have been right to smile. His absence hadn't been her work, after all.

Lenna pulled out her cellphone, and idly tapped out a text to someone at S.U.P.E.R. 'Google Slate, Columbia'.

To Lee, she said. "I haven't talked to Slate in a while. Wonder what he's up to now."

Hopefully, her contact at S.U.P.E.R. would get the text and give her some information before the conversation got too far off the rails.

Lenna had a name for who had likely been the one in charge of the cartel that had attacked Tarin and Slate. Lee couldn't remember if she had ever been told his name. That hadn't been the important part of what she had learned about Columbia, and there had been a lot that she had learned from Slate, both immediately after the attack and once they were back in the States.

Then Lenna was asking if she knew what Slate had been up to recently. At that, Lee frowned. ”Last I heard, he was in college,” Lee said. There might have been a bit of bitterness entering her voice at that. ”Though he should have graduated by now, unless he changed his mind about what he's doing again.” Just like he had changed his mind about changing the world so he could go to school.

Her knee jerk reaction to the statement was to consider Slate young. College tended to be for the young. He could have been older, going back for a degree. But young was what she labeled him as, despite knowing an assumption like that was unfair.

A young man building in Columbia, getting into trouble with cartels and surviving. With people working with him, or for him. He must have had power. But he'd lost touch with those people, and gone off to college. It seemed like a very young thing to do. The capriciousness of youth.

Her alternate self had worked for a young guy? Weird. Clearly, he had money to go around. But yet he'd let his connections fall apart.

"Hm. Yeah. He always struck me as someone who could change his mind at a moment's notice." Lenna said.

She drank her coffee. It was getting low. Her phone pinged. She held up one finger as she checked the text. It seemed the top hit was some guy who had run a lab. Mondragon? Medical breakthroughs. A heart. But something had happened and it wasn't active anymore. He hadn't been active on the big scientific breakthrough front. There'd been nothing about Columbia, however, other than documents stating he'd been, and returned. It listed the dates. The text said he'd keep digging.

She looked back at Lee. "I wonder if he went through the rift," Lenna pondered. "Scientific-minded guy like him would probably be curious. Big glowing distortion in the air. People wandering in and out of existence. It's freaky, right?"

A mad scientist would find a rift in the fabric of space and time most exploitable. If the guy wasn't just some punk college student who had gotten his rocks off building schools in Columbia, he might have some interest. Her gut told her she wouldn't have worked with some punk college student, regardless of the cash involved. It was hard to get a read on Lee, though. The woman seemed oddly normal.