Shaggy and Slink found that the keys they had didn’t open the back of the van. Luckily, breaking into the side-door was pretty simple. All Shaggy had to do was slip a claw down the seam of the side-door, cutting the lock, and they were in. Slink was the first into the back of the van. But Shaggy was stymied by the overwhelming smell coming from the van. It smelled like old sweat, piss and something else. Something... raunchier.
“Oh god!” Shaggy said as he backpedaled from the van’s sliding door.
“What?!” Slink asked, worried, as he crouched walked around the van’s insides.
“I think the feds had themselves a little love nest.”
“How do you know?”
Shaggy just pointed to his nose as he walked toward the front of the van. Luckily, the driver's side door was just as easy to snip open. It was also, thankfully, blocked from the back of the van with a thin sheet of metal. The back of the van’s stink was less pungent up here. Shaggy checked the various dials and toggles on the van’s dash.
“We got GPS, city diagrams, and some kind of sky-lane interference device up here!” Shaggy called back.
Slink didn’t answer, so Shaggy continued to search the front of the van. He found several journals, all written in pen and in some kind of blocky lettering. There was also a sign-out sheet for the van, listing the agents who requisitioned the vehicle and how much fuel they used. He tossed the sign-out sheet and journals into the passenger seat and continued searching. Shaggy was really hoping for some weapons or something. But the front of the van was mostly crumbled paper and food wrappers. Whoever these agents were, they had been out here a while.
Shaggy found a few silver manacles that didn’t have key holes. They seemed to use some kind of heavy magnet or something to keep them closed. Even with all his strength, Shaggy couldn’t get them loose. He smiled and tossed the set of cuffs in the air before catching them.
“Don’t know when y’all will come in handy. But I’m sure you will.”
Suddenly the passenger door open and Slink jumped in. “Nothing but some high-tech monitoring equipment back there. Lot of stuff aimed down at the Barton Creek Estates.”
“So they were probably here investigating someone.”
“Most likely.” Slink said as he picked up the papers Shaggy had tossed and started going through them.
Shaggy let out a low growl as he stared down at the large estates in the gated community. From their vantage point, they had a decent look down on several properties. Each large mansion seemed more eclectic than the last. Some were large multistory palatial mansion. While others were squat, neo-modern buildings. Shaggy even spotted some green, yellow, and red fun house looking thing. He shuddered at the thought of a super-rich clown running around down there.
“HOLY SHIT, DUDE!” Slink screamed, batting Shaggy on his arm excitedly.
Shaggy barely felt the taps, but still grabbed the kid’s hand and looked over. Slink was face deep in the sign-out sheet for the van. Even with his face somewhat obscured, Shaggy could tell the kid was smiling like crazy.
“What is it?”
Slink looked up. “Dude!”
The young man thrust the sign-out sheet back at Shaggy. He grumbled slightly, but he took the sheet and read the lists of names. Various agents had checked out this van from a nearby federal field office. It hadn’t been checked out in a few months, but Shaggy didn’t see the connection.
His thoughts must’ve shown on his face as Slink groaned and took the book back and spun it around. He tapped a pale finger against the latest entry and Shaggy read it aloud.
“Donovan Marshall. So?”
“Argh!” Slink yelled. “So! The agent’s name down the hill was Albert Monroe!”
“Oh, shit there’s another one?!” Shaggy started looking around went to get out of the driver’s seat, but Slink punched him in the arm.
“No dumbass! Look at the date. Marshall checked out this van over a month ago. There’s even an annotation of him turning it in a week later. I think these agents stole this van, or at least didn’t put it on the books.”
Shaggy scratched his head. “Okay, so they stole it. Doesn’t that mean the feds are probably looking for it? Does this thing have a tracker on it?”
Slink rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It probably did, but if Monroe and the other agent stole this van. Then they probably removed it, right?”
“Maybe.”
Shaggy began searching around the cab for anything that looked like a tracking device. Although, in reality, he did not know what he was looking for. He just hoped that the thing would have a blinking red light on it. But after a cursory search of the van’s cab, he couldn’t find anything. Grumbling again, he moved to get out of the van.
“Like look in the back. Hopefully, it’s aired out by now.”
Slink didn’t seem to hear him as the pale boy was face-deep in the journals. But he gave Shaggy a grunt of affirmation. Shaggy waved the boy off and cautiously snuck back to the side of the van. He kept his nose pointed away, but the smell of sweat, sex, and urine still hit him. It was considerably less potent now, but it still burned.
“What kind of sick bastards were these?” Shaggy muttered as he climbed into the van.
The back of the van’s interior was a cramped rectangular room with one side full of various monitors and equipment. There were two short chairs pushed off to the side near the front of the van. Near the back were two sleeping bags that had been laid out on the floor. Shaggy spotted the source of the piss smell immediately. It was a large plastic bucket that looked like it was half full. Shaggy turned up his nose and grabbed the container. But Slink’s voice stopped him.
“Don’t throw out the piss! That would be evidence that we were here!”
“Grrrrrrr! I think the bodies would be evidence, too.” Shaggy muttered, but he put down the plastic container full of piss and covered his nose.
All the electronic equipment and holo-terminals were deactivated. There were a few racks on the inner door-side of the van, but they all looked empty. Whatever they were supposed to be carrying looked pretty bulky, though. Shaggy guessed that they held some kind of heavy weapons or other large ordinance. He was about to leave, the smell of urine getting to him, when he spotted a small circular device. It had a dead red light at the top and a series of wires stick out the bottom. Shaggy grinned.
“Dude!”
Shaggy leapt from the back of the van and ran around to the front again. “I found it. At least it looks like… are you crying?”
Slink raised red-rimmed eyes and Shaggy could see water slowly filling the boy’s wide eyes. Slink clutched a journal in his hands and sniffled softly. Shaggy swallowed, uncomfortable with the obvious emotion on the boy’s face.
“Are you, uhhhh… okay?”
Slink wiped a hand over his eyes and sniffed again. “Yeah. Sorry. It just got to me. Apparently I was right. These agents are AWOL. All tracking on the van has been disabled. We’ll have to be careful if we use any federal tech, but we can have that looked into later. For now, just treat it like a normal van with some decent spy equipment in the back.”
Shaggy got into the driver's seat and sighed. “Okay. So what’s the story?”
“It’s stupid.” Slink chuckled. “The type of schlock you’d get on the daytime vids IRL.”
“Don’t leave me in suspense.” Shaggy chuckled.
“Haaaa…” Slink let out a breath before he continued. “Ziva Peretz. Aged thirty-two. She was the Telepath. These are her personal journals. I don’t know why she brought a bunch of them with her. Maybe it’s the game setting up a story hook or something. Maybe she didn’t intend to go back home. I don’t know.”
“You’re stalling.”
“It’s a big look into her life. Joining the agency, meeting Albert, her friendship with her partner, Christie. Struggling to be seen at the agency. Not to mention the distrust she got from people. Apparently, being a mind-reader doesn’t instill a lot of goodwill in people.”
Shaggy sighed and sat back in the driver’s seat. The boy was circling to the main point, slowly.
“Then Ziva and Christie caught the tail of some big-time criminal out here. So they went at it. Hard. Started making arrest, putting people into high-security Supe prisons, they even got a few people to turn state’s evidence. Things were looking up.”
“Until they weren’t.” Shaggy said, seeing where this particular in-game hook was going.
Slink nodded. “Until they weren’t. Christie and Ziva got a call about another informant of theirs wanting to meet. Ziva was on a date with Albert, so Christie went alone. It was a trap. She didn’t make it. Ziva and Albert found her body days later. The things they did to her. Ziva wrote she was still having nightmares about it.”
Shaggy got the rest of the picture. Ziva went off the deep end. Targeting this crime lord guy or whoever he was. Probably drug Albert along. Maybe he also felt guilty? Shaggy sighed as he gazed out over the estates. The kid was right. It was the kind of story line you’d get from a Vid show. One of revenge and probably full of action and near misses. And they had brought that little story to an abrupt end.
Slink banged his head against the back of the passenger seat. “It’s fucking stupid! They aren’t even real!”
“HA!” Shaggy laughed loudly. “That’s what makes this a great game, kid. That’s the point of movies, books, games, or, hell, any other kind of media. The great ones draw out some kind of empathetic response. Sure, nothing in those journals is real, but you can identify with the emotions they are trying to convey and you resonate with that. It can feel pretty good at times, when a great story beat or moment draws out some honest emotion in a person.”
“None of this feels good, Shags.” Slink grimaced. “Ziva went in depth at the damage done to Christie. I don’t think she wanted to forget what happened. Some of it... was disgusting.”
Slink’s eyes went glassy as he stared at the estates just outside the van’s front window. Shaggy sighed, crossed his arms.
“So, what do you want to do?”
Slink blinked, then turned to Shaggy. “What?”
“What do you want to do with this newfound feeling and the information this very lifelike game has given you? We still need to finish our own job here.”
Slink waved around the journal he was still holding. “This is stuff for Heroes, Shags. We’re Villains.”
Shaggy howled with laughter. “BHAHAHAHAHAHA! Come on, kid! You know what the best part about being a Villain is?”
When Slink shook his head, Shaggy continued. “The freedom! We can do what the fuck we want! Anytime we want! We want to kill a few civilians in a hospital? We can. Want to save a kitten from a tree? Sure. We want to hit a second evil piece of shit for no other reason than we can? Let’s fucking do it!”
Slink laughed. “Haha! You know that just sounds like poor impulse control, right?”
“Who the hell cares? So who’s this other guy we’re hitting other than Spiegal?”
“Shouldn’t we wait to tell the others? Maybe take this fancy truck to them or something?”
Shaggy waved the boy off. “Bah! We’re here. Let’s at least finish the job we came to do. Now we just have to hit a second criminal.”
Shaggy grinned as he tried to put his feet up on the van’s dashboard. But the array of trash in the way made it tricky. Eventually, he settled for just leaning back and grinning.
“Pfft.” Slink stifled a laugh as he sighed again. “Ahhhhh. His name is Teo Santos, and he leads one of the largest gangs of Supes in Texas. There were rumors they were moving out to Austin, but nothing concrete until Ziva tracked him here. She didn’t know who all he brought out here, but she figured it was a few of his top people.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Well, at the very least, it won’t be boring. But I still think we should tell the others first. We can treat it like a small-scale event thing. Just for our group.”
“Okay.” Shaggy rubbed his hands together. “We can raid this Teo guy later. For now, let’s use some of this fancy equipment to find Drew Spiegal.”
Slink groaned as he made to get out of the van. “Do you even know how to use some of this equipment?”
“No idea. But how hard could it be?”
Shaggy and Slink found that the keys they had didn’t open the back of the van. Luckily, breaking into the side-door was pretty simple. All Shaggy had to do was slip a claw down the seam of the side-door, cutting the lock, and they were in. Slink was the first into the back of the van. But Shaggy was stymied by the overwhelming smell coming from the van. It smelled like old sweat, piss and something else. Something... raunchier.
“Oh god!” Shaggy said as he backpedaled from the van’s sliding door.
“What?!” Slink asked, worried, as he crouched walked around the van’s insides.
“I think the feds had themselves a little love nest.”
“How do you know?”
Shaggy just pointed to his nose as he walked toward the front of the van. Luckily, the driver's side door was just as easy to snip open. It was also, thankfully, blocked from the back of the van with a thin sheet of metal. The back of the van’s stink was less pungent up here. Shaggy checked the various dials and toggles on the van’s dash.
“We got GPS, city diagrams, and some kind of sky-lane interference device up here!” Shaggy called back.
Slink didn’t answer, so Shaggy continued to search the front of the van. He found several journals, all written in pen and in some kind of blocky lettering. There was also a sign-out sheet for the van, listing the agents who requisitioned the vehicle and how much fuel they used. He tossed the sign-out sheet and journals into the passenger seat and continued searching. Shaggy was really hoping for some weapons or something. But the front of the van was mostly crumbled paper and food wrappers. Whoever these agents were, they had been out here a while.
Shaggy found a few silver manacles that didn’t have key holes. They seemed to use some kind of heavy magnet or something to keep them closed. Even with all his strength, Shaggy couldn’t get them loose. He smiled and tossed the set of cuffs in the air before catching them.
“Don’t know when y’all will come in handy. But I’m sure you will.”
Suddenly the passenger door open and Slink jumped in. “Nothing but some high-tech monitoring equipment back there. Lot of stuff aimed down at the Barton Creek Estates.”
“So they were probably here investigating someone.”
“Most likely.” Slink said as he picked up the papers Shaggy had tossed and started going through them.
Shaggy let out a low growl as he stared down at the large estates in the gated community. From their vantage point, they had a decent look down on several properties. Each large mansion seemed more eclectic than the last. Some were large multistory palatial mansion. While others were squat, neo-modern buildings. Shaggy even spotted some green, yellow, and red fun house looking thing. He shuddered at the thought of a super-rich clown running around down there.
“HOLY SHIT, DUDE!” Slink screamed, batting Shaggy on his arm excitedly.
Shaggy barely felt the taps, but still grabbed the kid’s hand and looked over. Slink was face deep in the sign-out sheet for the van. Even with his face somewhat obscured, Shaggy could tell the kid was smiling like crazy.
“What is it?”
Slink looked up. “Dude!”
The young man thrust the sign-out sheet back at Shaggy. He grumbled slightly, but he took the sheet and read the lists of names. Various agents had checked out this van from a nearby federal field office. It hadn’t been checked out in a few months, but Shaggy didn’t see the connection.
His thoughts must’ve shown on his face as Slink groaned and took the book back and spun it around. He tapped a pale finger against the latest entry and Shaggy read it aloud.
“Donovan Marshall. So?”
“Argh!” Slink yelled. “So! The agent’s name down the hill was Albert Monroe!”
“Oh, shit there’s another one?!” Shaggy started looking around went to get out of the driver’s seat, but Slink punched him in the arm.
“No dumbass! Look at the date. Marshall checked out this van over a month ago. There’s even an annotation of him turning it in a week later. I think these agents stole this van, or at least didn’t put it on the books.”
Shaggy scratched his head. “Okay, so they stole it. Doesn’t that mean the feds are probably looking for it? Does this thing have a tracker on it?”
Slink rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It probably did, but if Monroe and the other agent stole this van. Then they probably removed it, right?”
“Maybe.”
Shaggy began searching around the cab for anything that looked like a tracking device. Although, in reality, he did not know what he was looking for. He just hoped that the thing would have a blinking red light on it. But after a cursory search of the van’s cab, he couldn’t find anything. Grumbling again, he moved to get out of the van.
“Like look in the back. Hopefully, it’s aired out by now.”
Slink didn’t seem to hear him as the pale boy was face-deep in the journals. But he gave Shaggy a grunt of affirmation. Shaggy waved the boy off and cautiously snuck back to the side of the van. He kept his nose pointed away, but the smell of sweat, sex, and urine still hit him. It was considerably less potent now, but it still burned.
“What kind of sick bastards were these?” Shaggy muttered as he climbed into the van.
The back of the van’s interior was a cramped rectangular room with one side full of various monitors and equipment. There were two short chairs pushed off to the side near the front of the van. Near the back were two sleeping bags that had been laid out on the floor. Shaggy spotted the source of the piss smell immediately. It was a large plastic bucket that looked like it was half full. Shaggy turned up his nose and grabbed the container. But Slink’s voice stopped him.
“Don’t throw out the piss! That would be evidence that we were here!”
“Grrrrrrr! I think the bodies would be evidence, too.” Shaggy muttered, but he put down the plastic container full of piss and covered his nose.
All the electronic equipment and holo-terminals were deactivated. There were a few racks on the inner door-side of the van, but they all looked empty. Whatever they were supposed to be carrying looked pretty bulky, though. Shaggy guessed that they held some kind of heavy weapons or other large ordinance. He was about to leave, the smell of urine getting to him, when he spotted a small circular device. It had a dead red light at the top and a series of wires stick out the bottom. Shaggy grinned.
“Dude!”
Shaggy leapt from the back of the van and ran around to the front again. “I found it. At least it looks like… are you crying?”
Slink raised red-rimmed eyes and Shaggy could see water slowly filling the boy’s wide eyes. Slink clutched a journal in his hands and sniffled softly. Shaggy swallowed, uncomfortable with the obvious emotion on the boy’s face.
“Are you, uhhhh… okay?”
Slink wiped a hand over his eyes and sniffed again. “Yeah. Sorry. It just got to me. Apparently I was right. These agents are AWOL. All tracking on the van has been disabled. We’ll have to be careful if we use any federal tech, but we can have that looked into later. For now, just treat it like a normal van with some decent spy equipment in the back.”
Shaggy got into the driver's seat and sighed. “Okay. So what’s the story?”
“It’s stupid.” Slink chuckled. “The type of schlock you’d get on the daytime vids IRL.”
“Don’t leave me in suspense.” Shaggy chuckled.
“Haaaa…” Slink let out a breath before he continued. “Ziva Peretz. Aged thirty-two. She was the Telepath. These are her personal journals. I don’t know why she brought a bunch of them with her. Maybe it’s the game setting up a story hook or something. Maybe she didn’t intend to go back home. I don’t know.”
“You’re stalling.”
“It’s a big look into her life. Joining the agency, meeting Albert, her friendship with her partner, Christie. Struggling to be seen at the agency. Not to mention the distrust she got from people. Apparently, being a mind-reader doesn’t instill a lot of goodwill in people.”
Shaggy sighed and sat back in the driver’s seat. The boy was circling to the main point, slowly.
“Then Ziva and Christie caught the tail of some big-time criminal out here. So they went at it. Hard. Started making arrest, putting people into high-security Supe prisons, they even got a few people to turn state’s evidence. Things were looking up.”
“Until they weren’t.” Shaggy said, seeing where this particular in-game hook was going.
Slink nodded. “Until they weren’t. Christie and Ziva got a call about another informant of theirs wanting to meet. Ziva was on a date with Albert, so Christie went alone. It was a trap. She didn’t make it. Ziva and Albert found her body days later. The things they did to her. Ziva wrote she was still having nightmares about it.”
Shaggy got the rest of the picture. Ziva went off the deep end. Targeting this crime lord guy or whoever he was. Probably drug Albert along. Maybe he also felt guilty? Shaggy sighed as he gazed out over the estates. The kid was right. It was the kind of story line you’d get from a Vid show. One of revenge and probably full of action and near misses. And they had brought that little story to an abrupt end.
Slink banged his head against the back of the passenger seat. “It’s fucking stupid! They aren’t even real!”
“HA!” Shaggy laughed loudly. “That’s what makes this a great game, kid. That’s the point of movies, books, games, or, hell, any other kind of media. The great ones draw out some kind of empathetic response. Sure, nothing in those journals is real, but you can identify with the emotions they are trying to convey and you resonate with that. It can feel pretty good at times, when a great story beat or moment draws out some honest emotion in a person.”
“None of this feels good, Shags.” Slink grimaced. “Ziva went in depth at the damage done to Christie. I don’t think she wanted to forget what happened. Some of it... was disgusting.”
Slink’s eyes went glassy as he stared at the estates just outside the van’s front window. Shaggy sighed, crossed his arms.
“So, what do you want to do?”
Slink blinked, then turned to Shaggy. “What?”
“What do you want to do with this newfound feeling and the information this very lifelike game has given you? We still need to finish our own job here.”
Slink waved around the journal he was still holding. “This is stuff for Heroes, Shags. We’re Villains.”
Shaggy howled with laughter. “BHAHAHAHAHAHA! Come on, kid! You know what the best part about being a Villain is?”
When Slink shook his head, Shaggy continued. “The freedom! We can do what the fuck we want! Anytime we want! We want to kill a few civilians in a hospital? We can. Want to save a kitten from a tree? Sure. We want to hit a second evil piece of shit for no other reason than we can? Let’s fucking do it!”
Slink laughed. “Haha! You know that just sounds like poor impulse control, right?”
“Who the hell cares? So who’s this other guy we’re hitting other than Spiegal?”
“Shouldn’t we wait to tell the others? Maybe take this fancy truck to them or something?”
Shaggy waved the boy off. “Bah! We’re here. Let’s at least finish the job we came to do. Now we just have to hit a second criminal.”
Shaggy grinned as he tried to put his feet up on the van’s dashboard. But the array of trash in the way made it tricky. Eventually, he settled for just leaning back and grinning.
“Pfft.” Slink stifled a laugh as he sighed again. “Ahhhhh. His name is Teo Santos, and he leads one of the largest gangs of Supes in Texas. There were rumors they were moving out to Austin, but nothing concrete until Ziva tracked him here. She didn’t know who all he brought out here, but she figured it was a few of his top people.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Well, at the very least, it won’t be boring. But I still think we should tell the others first. We can treat it like a small-scale event thing. Just for our group.”
“Okay.” Shaggy rubbed his hands together. “We can raid this Teo guy later. For now, let’s use some of this fancy equipment to find Drew Spiegal.”
Slink groaned as he made to get out of the van. “Do you even know how to use some of this equipment?”
“No idea. But how hard could it be?”
