wake me when it's over. Indigo/Adrien {clue}

Adrien wanted answers, and he jumped at the first opportunity he had to find some. He wasn't necessarily proud of his methods: Indigo happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. It wasn't like he'd all in all threatened the guy, but some veiled words may or may not have been exchanged in a strategic method, which ended with both of them slinking down the hall, quiet as mice, pausing in the shadows of the cavernous mansion to look over their shoulders.

The red haired receptionist must've been on break by happy coincidence, or perhaps she was just finished with her work for the day and forgot to lock up, but Adrien was a bit shocked at how easily he'd simply opened the door to his father's office and walked in without anyone stopping him.

"So why are you here? I mean, Mr. Nox made it clear in his letter that he respected my intelligence. I’ve studied a great many things…"

Indigo's stare was simultaneously vacant and wildly vivid. Adrien wondered if it was all a supposed genius like him could do, retreating to his own thoughts and imagination when the endless variables of the real world were too endless. Maybe they would be caught. Maybe they would be kicked out of the program, even if Indigo was only the lookout. Maybe Adrien would still rat him out and he would get kicked out anyway. Maybe they wouldn't be caught.

It was the maybe, Adrien decided, that people like Indigo couldn't handle.

"Uh, sick mom," Adrien explained, not bothering to look up from the stack of papers in his hands. Not a lie; certainly not the complete truth, either.

"And, you know, history of beating the odds and making the best of what I have. Blah blah blah."

Oh, and the man who brought us here is eighteen years late on child support.

"Hey, you’re not related to Lethe Turner are you? No, hang on, that can’t be right…"

Indigo entertained himself by poking his head into the hallway every few seconds, but Adrien couldn't help feeling like his lanky counterpart was studying him. He didn't reply; he didn't like where the conversation was headed.

"Someone could smell that, you know."

He looked up at Indigo for the first time, who'd started puffing on the joint in his left hand. Tendrils of smoke danced around him and Adrien wasn't even sure if the other boy heard him.

"What’re you looking for anyway? Flask? Cigars? Nudie mags? Dead body?"

He rolled his eyes, so Indigo carried on.

"I mean, you don’t tend to get this rich without having a couple vices and a few skeletons in the closet right?"

He opened a drawer and made a clicking noise.

"Exactly. Don't you want to know what we're really here for? A complete stranger shows up and offers a ridiculously expensive estate to us, some random kids he's never met, and there's no catch?" He stopped for a moment, giving himself time to gather his thoughts and scan the room. He saw a filing cabinet in the corner and stood to walk over to it.

"There's always a catch."

He was surprised by how much Indigo's questions bothered him. The questions themselves weren't intrusive. They were cordial enough, just a decent human trying to have decent conversation. Adrien knew the problem he had was within himself, with the secrets he would be buried with.

Why was he here, really?

Because of his goddamn last name, and nothing more.

He didn't want that to be true. He didn't want to be here as a legacy, and he planned on doing everything he could to keep that truth from ever seeing the light of day. He would carry the weight of it, he decided, to his grave. Or, at the very least, through the rest of this competition.

"Thoughts on the competition, Adrien?"

He tried to pry the cabinet open with an ink pen; it didn't work.

"I don't like making assumptions about anyone. That's why I'm here."

He tried lifting the cabinet to get some leverage, and had no luck.

"Hey, come help me lift this. Stupid thing's locked."

The coldness of the metal sent chills up his arms and down his spine in an uncomfortable way. It felt intrusive, though he really didn't have much room to complain, seeing as he had already broken into the office and was now trying to break into the filing cabinet.

After rocking it perhaps a bit too hard a few times, he heard the locking mechanism snap out of place. Adrien slid the drawer out and offered Indigo a crooked half-grin. The inside was filled with manila folders, all labeled and placed neatly in their precise spot. Everything, the entire estate so far, had such a strange sense of order. Every item, every room, every person served its purpose. He wondered what someone like this was ever doing with his mother, who often stuffed so many things into the drawers at their house that he had to wriggle it to open it up.

He finger walked his way over the tops of them, glancing at titles as he went. Mostly, it seemed uninteresting until the name Adam caught his attention. If memory served, that was the boy with the set jaw and the lighter in his hand. The next file showed Adrien's name, then Amrin, all the way down to Whitney. Every single candidate.

"Holy shit," he said. He grabbed Adam's file and his own file in one fell swoop, trying his best to be discreet. He didn't think Indigo would have the gaul to try and read Adrien's own file while he was standing right in front of him, but he could've always come back later. Anyone could have. Hell, someone might have already. There were some shady, awful, brilliant people in the mix of this; Adrien and Indigo weren't the only ones who would be looking for a leg up on the competition.

Nevertheless, no one would get the chance now. Not with him. When he walked out of this room, he'd be taking everything in that file with him.

"Study up," he said, opening Adam's file.

Most of it was stuff he didn't need: address, education level, job experience. It seemed the more interesting a piece of information could've been, the more cryptic it was on paper. For instance, he found a post-it with the word fire scribbled down in hasty lettering. It could've meant anything as far as he was concerned, but he thought back to the lighter in Adam's hand and wondered if it was a coincidence.

"Jesus," he said, scanning the pages, "It's like trying to put a puzzle together without all the pieces."

There was a picture of a pretty woman smiling in front of a window. There was no caption, no explanation. There was a key that looked freshly made, tucked inside a plastic bag and stapled to a pack of papers that appeared to be copies of his school report cards.

"No, scratch that. It's like trying to make one puzzle out of three sets of pieces."

Maybe if he'd been smarter like Indigo, or wiser like Amrin he would've been able to understand, but he was here as an apology. He wondered if he'd even be able to decode the things in his own file, or if anyone else would be able to.

"He probably did this on purpose, to keep this exact thing from happening."