2,000 Lives -Mavin fanfic-

Chapter 4

(Michael's POV)

Geoff could be a bit secretive at times. Maybe that wasn't the right word, but it felt like he never wanted to give people information all at once. After explaining to us Ray hadn't been home since the party, he sent us both home to bed. He waited until the next day to really get me in to what was happening.

As I sat on my bed, I thought about how I would spend my emeralds that week. I had won a Let's Play about 4 weeks earlier so I was just barely getting to the point where I really needed to only spend it on food. As I thought through these things, I heard a loud knock on the door. I looked up from my bed and stood up.

"Hello?" I asked as I opened it wide. Geoff was standing there with a serious face, and moved it closer to me as he walked in and almost slammed the door behind him. With his back against it, he looked out through the window on my right to make sure nobody saw him enter. His cat like movements let me know something was wrong.

"Nobody is here right now, right?" He asked, now looking around my small wooden home. "No cameras, no nothing?"

As I nodded my head, he eased up and loosened his shoulders. He stepped away from the door and turned to face me. He wasn't afraid to jump straight in to everything.

"We have a lot of possibilities of what might have happened to Ray. He could have gone exploring and got lost, or maybe he purposely ran away."

"Why would he do that?" I asked, going along with it instantly.

"Exactly. I'm not throwing those ideas away, but there are definitely some more likely scenarios of what happened."

"Geoff, enough of this weirdo talk, what are you trying to say?"

"I'm not the only one who thinks this, okay? Ryan and Jack agree with me. We think that maybe someone could have kidnapped or murdered him."

His words didn't surprise me. I had already thought through the idea of Ray's death the night before, despite the fact he probably had so many lives left. But I think we all felt like that was a possibility even though nobody wanted to talk about the idea. It wasn't completely realistic that they could have defeated Ray even if they had  taken him away first so we couldn't hear his screams. But I guess we already knew they must have given him a new spawn or he would have been back by then.

"There isn't anyone for miles near us besides the Achievement Hunters," was all I said.

"Someone could have figured out where we live in the night. Maybe they murdered him and got rid of the evidence, or maybe they took him away."

The image shot chills down my spine. I had been trying to be tough thinking about the idea of Ray's murder, but Geoff was doing a better job than me.

"Or," Geoff continued. "Maybe it was someone closer to him." He waited for a few seconds, but before I could ask anything he continued talking. "What does Ray have that someone would want to kill him for?"

I looked around the room as I thought. "Well, everything. The tower of pimps. Money."

"Bingo," Geoff said as he pointed his finger at me. "Now I came to you because, don't get me wrong I don't have any serious accusations, but you're closest with a certain someone who might just need that money more than anyone."

As I formed his words together in my mind, I shook my head. "No! Geoff, I know him well enough to know he would never get rid of a person in the way you were saying." Every image of Ray's death was suddenly morphed in to a new one, one with Gavin in it. I felt my heart beat faster and faster as the words I was told got scarier.

"I know, I know. But you just need to think about it. Gavin seems like the kind of person who would cheat, and I actually have reasons to believe he has been. He hasn't won in so long he should be starving every day by now."

I felt a lump rise in my throat and had to fight the urge to gulp. As Geoff looked straight at me, I felt like he knew everything about the food I had been giving him. He couldn't. Right? Even worse, it felt like he was threatening me with it. This was his way of saying, "I know exactly what you're up to, and you're going to pay for it the hard way."

"So what do you want from me?" I asked.

"You can get information out of him better than anyone can. Just talk to him."

"We both know Ray would beat down Gavin to the fucking ground in a fight."

"I guess that's a good point, but you're not getting out of this."

He was right, and he didn't need to remind me. Geoff was my boss and he had the power to take away everything  loved and cared about.

"Okay. I'll talk to him."

I wasn't sure if I was lying or not yet. I had to remind myself all the reasons why Ray couldn't be dead and why Gavin couldn't have anything to do with it. I told myself Ray would be there the next day and we would all laugh at our silly ideas we had put in to words. He was going to be fine. I knew he was still alive out there. In the end I decided I liked the idea that he had gotten lost, and that he was digging up from a cave to us right then with some of the very rare iron that these days was usually all dug up already. I still couldn't ignore the other possibilities no matter how hard I tried.

Geoff made the blankest expression possible as he nodded his head. Then he carefully peaked his head through my door and looked both ways. He only ran and scrambled back home when he was sure everyone was still inside. And by everyone, I mean Gavin.