Find material on Gretchen.

The best plan would be to revert to what I knew worked before. Blackmailing. Unfortunately, I knew practically nothing about Gretchen's personal life. Which was kinda weird, considering we had worked together for three years now. I knew she wasn't married, and I knew that only because I never saw any family photos in her office. But thinking about it, that meant no pictures of siblings or parents either. Maybe she was just fiercely independent? Or some arguments caused her to run away from home? ...Maybe that was a stretch?

I only knew that she had come here from some other magazine, what was it called... Well it was some lifetsyle-shit or something. However, this was her first editor's job. I wondered why and how exactly she got the promotion. Yeah, there could be something there.

I started googleing her. And I got nothing useful out of that. Apparently she was a writer before. I tried to read some of her pieces, but dear God they were boring. And she had the gall to call my writing shitty? It wasn't worth reading all of them, and I didn't have unlimited time anymore. In fact, looking around the office, I suddenly realized it was evening and I was the last one here. So, how was I going to divide my time here? Should I try writing some of that "perfect" article?

No, fuck that, that wasn't the point. The article could be literally even worse than the one I submitted today. I just had to make Gretchen say it was perfect. So okay, fine, I should dedicate all my time on project Gretchen.

But there was nothing here. No leads. By all accounts she lead a normal life even though she was a hardass... uuh yeah, hardass... no, focus!

Either I had to dig deeper or get her to follow my commands some other way.

All of a sudden, lights turned off in the hallway. Could it be...

Yes, Gretchen was leaving. Maybe she left her office unlocked?

Nope. Goddammit. As locked as it could be. Was I going to get any progress today?

There was still one thing I could do. The extremely creepy thing of following her around like I was in a bad spy movie.

It was chilly night. I kept enough of a distance, that she couldn't see me. I actually had no idea where she lived, but guess it was nearby, since she just kept walking. A huge fedora or a cowboy hat could have been useful to hide my face if she looked behind her, but guess this was living on the edge.

Fifteen minutes of walking. Nothing. Absolutely goddamn nothing. Why couldn't I have gotten a more useful app? One that made you God or rewrote the rules of the universe? This shit isn't fair.

Then...

Something.

A shriek.

A huge rat ran down the street and almost bumbed into Gretchen. However, the slippery thing saw a convenient drain and decided to continue in that direction. But Gretchen... She didn't keep moving. It looked almost like she was breaking down, and breathing loudly. She had to sit down on a nearby stair.

Five minutes later, she finally got up and started walking again. But that's alright, I didn't need to follow her anymore.

I didn't get any **** material, but got something almost as good.