The Wild Ones - Part 2 - The Catalyst

10.

"Hey Michael. It's Max," Max said hesitantly.

"Max, how are you mate?" Michael sat up in his large, silk bed, putting a hand through his ruffled hair.

"Yeah, I'm fine. How about you though; I wasn't even sure if they'd let you use your phone in the hospital."

"All good man. Just getting some bed rest," Michael chuckled to himself, and nodded for the attractive blonde in his bed to give him some space. "So why the check-in? Things can't be that bad after just one day, can they?"

Max thought for a moment on how to make it seem like they weren't. "Something's happened to Tom. He's...accompanying some people with--"

"You got your brother kidnapped?"

"Well, not so much me. Kinda was his fault. Well, not entirely his fault but..." Max stopped himself before his whole brain tumbled out of his mouth.

"Who's taken him? And why?" Michael pulled back the sheets and sat up. He reached across to his bedside table and began jotting things down as Max spoke.

"A group called 'Artemis', apparently. Some hippie cult sect; their leader was killed the other day."

"By Derek Black, yeah I heard."

"Right. Well it turns out Derek's son is our fifth member."

Michael stopped writing to smirk slightly. Max heard it.

"So you're gonna be hanging around with the child of a murderer for the foreseeable future?" Michael laughed and grabbed a shirt to haphazardly put on. "Good luck with that."

"Well that's still just a possibility right now. For all we know they're both bloody...dead or something," Max exclaimed.

"Come on now. I don't know much about these 'Artemis' people, but I think I'd know if they were mere thugs. Think logically Maxwell; they're purely using your brother and the Black kid as security. They won't do anything to them unless necessary."

"That's great and all but we still need some help finding where they've taken them."

"As far as I know, Artemis are a nomadic group. I know they live within the woods and forests, but I don't even think it was until recently that they came down this way. I can try to get in contact with some people, but I can't offer anything more productive at the moment I'm afraid."

Max sighed and looked across to the girls to his side. It was disheartening to see how much faith they'd put in this one person they barely knew.

"Max, at the end of the day, it's Tom; even though he plays the fool far too convincingly, sometimes he still has a brain up there. As do you. Keep me in the loop, OK?" Michael said.

"Yeah, we'll...think of something," The girls read between the lines and slumped mournfully. "Thanks anyway," Max ended the call and bit his phone.

"Not even him, huh?" Lily asked, closely examining the floor.

"It was a longshot. We're literally asking him to find a needle in a haystack. It's pretty much all on us," Max replied, flipping his phone in his hands.

Michael rubbed his stubble in thought. He often saw life as an ever-lasting chess game, but he was struggling with the next move.

"Everything OK?" the blonde girl came back in, apparently having found one of his shirts to wear.

"Yeah. Yeah it should be," Michael said, still weighing up his options.

The girl jumped back on the bed and draped herself around him.

"Ready to go again?" she said, whispering into his ear.

"One last phone call," Michael said, standing up and allowing the girl to collapse behind him.

He double checked his thoughts before finding a number in his phone and calling it up.

"Hey, it's Michael...Yeah, I'm good thanks, listen, I need a favour. You know about Derek Black right? Guy on the news who...Yeah, that's the one. I need you to dig up all you can on him. We need to make sure he goes down for a very long time."