Saving Matthew Patrick

Water or Diet Coke?

Jason POV

"Come on, let's get you home."

"How?"

I assumed it was safe to open my eyes, so I did. If not for the blood trail on the ground, things looked...peaceful. I watched as Vanessa touched one hand to her necklace and clapped the other one firmly on Matt's shoulder. "Take a deep breath and brace yourself." Surprisingly, he followed without further questions. He must have been so worn out that he no longer had the energy. I tapped both Chris and Steph on their shoulders and their eyes were already open, watching along as Nessa's necklace glowed bright yellow once more and blinded the camera. When the light was gone, so were they on the screen.

A moment later, they were here. In the game room, with us.

"MATTHEW!" Steph jumped up and ran to him, engulfing him in what looked like a rib-crushingly tight embrace. "Oh thank God." She then stepped away and brought Nessa in for another embrace. "Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you! I don't know how you did it, but you saved him. Thank you for bringing him home."

"Of course. Anything for my favorite people." She offered up a big smile and brought her hand back up to her necklace, making it glow once again.

"WAIT!" We turned to Matthew, who let out a hoarse croak of a plea, and then started coughing.

"Should we give him water or a Diet Coke?" I could hear the humor in Nessa's voice. She seemed like such a lighthearted person when things were not in this level of chaos. I saw as she touched her necklace briefly and two bottles materialized on the table in front of us, one bottle of Fiji, and the other Diet Coke. She took the water and handed it over to him. "This should help the dry throat."

"Thank you." He set the bottle down on the table and promptly reached for the other and downed that quicker than the did the water. We all let out our chuckles at that. "I needed that. Both of that. Now, who are you? Really? And don't give me that 'nobody important' BS. The technology that you're wearing alone tells me otherwise. The fear in Wraith's voice when he said your name, when he said Evangeline, tells me you're someone big in that world. That red room world. But I don't know, that's..."

"Just a theory?" We all said together. We looked at one another and laughed, this time really laughed. Things seemed to be looking up, which was honestly all that mattered.

"He's right, though," Nessa began. "I am someone in that world. There was a time I brought down red rooms like dominoes, one after the other until it all ran out. Only they never ran out; I'd take one down, five pop up back in its place. People started getting more creative, and at that time, getting paid in BitCoin was cool and all, but it wasn't paying the bills. I needed a job, in the real world, get paid with real money that had real value outside the internet.

"I quit being Evangeline and started working as a software engineer, with little projects on the side where I aimed to bring the technology that we could only see in movies closer to home. I very rarely broke my rule that I wouldn't go back to the Dark Web, not for anyone. But then people in my own social circle disappeared and I had to save them all, which led to the people in the office finding out who I really was. And then a friend of a friend of mine got caught up in some bad business with shady people and he called me up begging me to come help. I couldn't say no."

"That was when you helped us," Chris quipped. She nodded.

"I decided then that I couldn't just leave the world all on its own, so I gave out my details to the ones I helped that day as well as to anyone who happened to be watching and felt their moral compasses protest when they watched. The rule from then on became if someone went missing, I'd do everything I could to help. I'd since then found ways to detect red rooms passively and forward the addresses to the authorities in the area the moment they became live."

"So why'd you help out here personally?" And there was Matthew, hitting with the hard questions once again.

"My gut." We looked at her, confused. "Something about Chris's phone call told me that I couldn't just press a button and go about the rest of my day. I knew that if I left this to my little automated tricks, I might trip something up by accident and things might go downhill way too fast for me to make up for it. So I decided to take this one on personally. Anyone who called my phone, I knew they needed my help so urgently because they didn't send an email or try calling out to me in the Deep Web; also, I knew that in a situation like this, it would get harder to move if I'd waited for the room to go live, so I decided on a more hands-on approach. Those alone were enough to make me drop everything and take this on myself."

Steph hugged her again. "We're glad you did. I don't know how we could ever thank you enough for what you did today."

Nessa shook her head. "Just knowing you're all back together and safe is enough. Also change your wifi password because if it's easy enough that I can crack into it on my first attempt, it's easy enough for a lot of people to crack it. Oh, and I still owe you a laptop repair for Wraith's attempt at wiping your drive. You can use my backup in the meantime, just gimme a second to make a profile for you." After a few keystrokes, they exchanged their laptops and Nessa began typing away at Steph's.

Things were quiet, and even with the addition of one honestly badass ass-kicking hacker in the room, things felt normal again.

***

A/N: We have reached the end of the plot! But not the end of the story! We'll be revisiting every single event that took place in Saving Matthew Patrick through the eyes of none other than MatPat himself! 

Now here's something: If you guys had a dry throat, what would you choose to drink? Water or Diet Coke? Or both? Or something else? Sound off in the comments! I'll see you all in the next update, and the comments section, and on Twitter (muddy_orbs). Bye! I'll be seeing you all in a few days for Matthew's POV.