Winning Choice: Call Ryan and ask him for help.
Author’s Note: Dang, people! What an avalanche of great ideas and comments for the last chapter - thank you! They really do help me out, even if I can’t use them all. With this chapter things are really going to speed up for Brandon, so I hope you like the pace. And the choice you make at the end of this will help set the bar for what Brandon is willing to do to save Nicole and get revenge.
Recap: After being reunited with Ryan, the Prius driver, who says he and his friends can help Brandon, Brandon kicks him out and tried to return to his regular life one more time. He then receives a strange visit from Warren who offers to help Brandon out and says it is for the good of humanity. Brandon brushes him off and returns home to find his wife, Nicole, missing in an apparent scuffle…
Whoever took Nicole knew what they were doing, and clearly knows all about me. If this is another push to get me into action they’re either not going to be easy to follow or it’s another trap. I need to get ahead of them. And unfortunately the person who seems best able to help me is also the one who is a confessed digital crook with more than a little paranoia.
So be it. The card Ryan left is crumpled under the coffee table. I smooth it out and see it really isn’t his card, but actually for a Hypnotherapist downtown. I really hope Ryan was just building this guy’s website for him and not trying to cure his own anime addition or something. I flip it over and dial the number on the back. He answers immediately.
“Brandon? Geeze, what happened to you? Your phone completely disappeared from the network before. We didn’t know if-”
“Shut up, Ryan. Does your offer to help still stand?” I ask.
“Heck yes! We’ve got more-“
“They took Nicole. I need you to help me find her.”
“They took her? Do you know who?” He yells something to other people in the room with him.
“No idea, but they took her right out of my house. Right out of our home. I’m done playing around.”
###
Ten minutes later I’m in Ryan’s apartment with two of his friends in a room with more electronic gear than I’ve ever seen. The rest of his small place is sparse and bare. Even if he’s been out of the hacking game for a while it’s clear that’s where his love, and all of his money, goes. I wonder if his bedroom just contains a mattress on the floor.
The first of his friends is a short, stocky guy, maybe twenty years old, with shaggy brown hair and rumpled clothes. He’s Tyler, and as he works he mumbles to himself a combination of technospeak and superlatives that sounds straight out of a comic book. At one point he pounds a key on his computer with a flourish and even says “POW!” out loud.
His other friend, Susan, is a petite, black-haired spitfire who seems to be the boss. Or at least the smartest of them, which may mean the same thing in this crew. She seems about the same age as Tyler, but she carries herself with a lot more confidence so it’s hard to tell.
“So you’re the super librarian,” she says, looking me over like a used car she was looking to buy.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t look any different from your average librarian,” I tell her.
“No,” she says. “You do. There’s something odd about you I can’t put my finger on.”
Tyler looks up and nods vigorously. “Yeah, I noticed that, too. Like he’s built a little different.”
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Power Shift (Book 1)
Science FictionBrandon Stamp is abducted on his way out of a grocery store. He doesn't know who took him or why, and when he finds out what they want him for his confusion turns into terror. Frantically searching for clues to the group behind his abduction, Brand...
