Conversations with Silas

     We found another number in the papers, and since we were out of change, Allen called it from his cellphone. It was Silas' phone, and Allen lept up when he heard his friend's voice, heaving a sigh of relief. He told Silas that it was Allen, and I heard silas roar something through the phone. I couldn't tell if it was relief or anger. About a minute later, I knew it was both. According to what Allen told me, after Allen lost his fight on the train, the man, Wilson, took his gun, wallet, knife and, most dangerously, his cellphone. Three days after I found Allen by the tracks, the bank was raided. In fact, Everyone Allen had visited received another visit, every call he made was tracked, every gps coordinate he had visited was re-checked. The entire network of people working to uncover this mystery had been plowed through by Wilson Ingram and the police.
     Now, it was Allen and I,  Silas, Liza, Mike, the hacker who had been traveling with Silas,and one other person from the bank who escaped with Liza. There were only six of us now. Silas had decided to meet with Allen and I, and we climbed back into our car and headed west again. Allen was a mess. He wouldn't let me drive, even though there were tears pouring from his face. Finding out that everything had collapsed because he had lost a fistfight may have broken him. I really don't think he was the same after that. I think that the overwhelming weight of it all may have finally made a crack in his resolve, and it wasn't long before that crack would widen.
     We met Silas in a junky diner, a day away from chicago. He and Liza had been travelling together, trying to find out more about what had happened. Mike and the other two hacker fellows were hidden away in a safe-house, living somewhere in the woods. Silas was a really gruff sort of guy, not ever rude, per se, but not the sort of guy who wasted words on niceties. His first impression was of a guy who had been through a lot, and didn't want to waste time. Liza seemed like a charming enough woman, if a bit of a flirt.
     They told us about the things that had happened after Allen went missing, how the police had used his phone to track everyone. Silas was on his way into chicago when it happened, and Liza had barely escaped across the roof with the other guy. There was a small access hatch on the roof, and they made it across the alley to safety. She had gotten ahold of Silas, and he had met them a couple miles from the bank. They had been travelling together since. Mike had gotten delayed at the train station, and was a day away when it happened, but he was nearly nabbed at a different station that week. He finally made it to Silas a week later. The whole thing had been a mess. They were pretty sure nobody else had escaped. Fortunately, Mike had kept ahold of the backpacks with all of the clues in them, and the cops hadn't gotten ahold of all of that.
     We told Silas and Liza everything we had learned, and they sat there, dumbfounded. They had no idea about the toys, and were disgusted. It took Silas a minute to decide what to say. It took Liza much longer. she just dropped her head to the table, and disappeared into her head for a bit. We spent the rest of the day in that diner, talking about what we knew, and what we needed to do next. Honetly, I don't think anyone was sure what to do.

The Return To The Bank

     We got to the bank late at night, and entered in through the back entrance. Allen tapped the Fibonacci sequence on the button, and we waited for a long time. A really long time. But nothing else happened. He shouted for someone to let him in, and when he got no response, he headed for the front door. When we got there, we realized that the chain had been cut. We pushed the door open, and were shocked by what was there before us. The entire place was empty. Cables had been torn from walls, papers were scattered across the floor. Everything was a mess. There was blood spattered on one wall, with a dent in the drywall next to it. The entire place had been raided. The vault had been blasted open, and the inside of it was empty except for a cheap metal bookshelf, laying on its side.
     Allen was Devastated. I was, too, of course, but I didn't know these people. Allen had friends here, friends who were at best all arrested, and at worst, friends who nobody would ever see again. He wandered through the ruins of the bank, and wiped dust off of a table. This had happened a long time ago, but it didn't matter to him. What mattered is that it happened at all. We gathered at much of the paper as we could, in the hopes that we could find something useful,  and then we left, before someone showed up for us. We found a small hotel, and Allen brought me some food. He didn't eat, he just drank a small bottle of vodka and put himself to sleep. He shook all night.
     The next morning, we dug through the papers, looking for something that might tell us where everyone had been taken, or even how to contact someone. All Allen wanted to do was find Silas, who he was sure hadn't been at the bank. He thought that Mike might have been there, in Chicago, when the raid happened. Allen kept pausing and staring at nothing while we looked though the papers  It was like he was trying to remember something that he never knew to begin with. We found a phone number, and Allen called it from a phone outside the hotel. It went to voicemail. Allen came back to the room slumped over. It was amazing the toll that this had taken on him, but it was more amazing that he was still standing. A lot of people think he may have been falling apart mentally, like he was going insane, but I think he was stronger than that. I think that he was exhausted, and he was overburdened with worry. The more he found out about this whole thing, the more he knew he had to protect people. He had a lot of protective instincts, but having to protect so many people was too much. He'd never admit it, though, he'd just press on.

Things In Perspective.

     We finally had a next step, and we knew what this whole cover-up was about. It was very exciting, but it was very threatening. These people had killed thousands of children by accident, and then to cover it up, they had been going across the country killing parents, and anyone who spoke out. Allen had been doing a lot of digging, So I was certain at this point he was on their new, revised list, probably with a big fat underline. It made me very anxious. But he was so excited to know something new, he was almost frantic, which was terrifying in a way, and also a bit of a relief. Allen had been so down since yesterday that to see his head spinning like that was a refreshing change. He seemed like he might be ready to see his friends again, so I mentioned it to him.
     He didn't like the sound of that at all. He felt he'd be putting them into more danger, and while I agreed with him, It seemed like they were in enough danger already. We spent the day discussing our next step, and reading through documents. Greg had done his research, and when we had the context of the article, we were able to really draw a lot more information from the paperwork. I finally convinced Allen that we should see his friends at the bank, and let them know what they had been fighting for.
     We drove for three days, and arrived in chicago, like a blur. I had never been to chicago before, so it was pretty exciting, but of course, we didn't get to do any sight-seeing. Instead, we charged straight for the bank.

(I'm sorry this post is so short, I'll make sure to give you a longer one soon, but I'm on the road right now, and haven't really had time to write more. It's really important to me to do Allen justice, so I don't want to write junk and send it out there. Thank you so much for reading so far! -Jess)

Learning Between The Walls

     After I had pried enough boards off of the wall to get inside, I began to pull things out of the walls. There were two filing boxes filled with paperwork, and most importantly, a map of the united states, covered in marks and post-it notes. I drug them out through the hole I had torn out, and we started to sift through the papers, as morning light rose into noon, and barely fell though the windows.
     The map was the simplest thing to understand. The locations on it were places that Gregory had hidden clues for Allen. Most of them, it turns out, he had already recovered. There were a couple in the midwest that were unaccounted for, but we weren't sure we needed them. The boxes, meanwhile were loaded with new information. We pored over it, lists of names, mostly, a lot of them, Allen pointed out, were probably the same names of people who had been on the list he found on the servers in the desert. We sifted through the names for most of the day, and didn't feel like we had gotten anything new.
     I decided to climb back into the wall, and give it a second look, just in case. The first thing I found in the wall was the latch that would have opened the wall up. There was a cable from a bike's brakes running along the wall, connected on one end to a latch, and disappearing into the wall. I flipped the latch, and realized that the wall over the bathtub was the door I should have been looking for. The other end of the brake cable was hooked to the toilet paper roll. When you pulled on the handle, the door would unlatch. Oops.
     But, looking from the outside of the tub, I saw what I really wanted to find. Right across from the hole, on the opposite wall, was a little shelf between two studs, and on top of that, was a newspaper. I brought it out, and I started looking through all of the articles. The newspaper was printed funny, and the word draft was all over it, which I guess meant that this wasn't a published issue. I looked though it, until I found a smallish article near the middle "Children Poisoned By Popular Toys". I read the article and took it to Allen. The children had been poisoned by an additive to the plastic used to extend the plastic, making higher volumes of plastic at lower cost. In theory, the additive was a real game-changer, because it would cost a lot less to produce plastic, and would also mean that recycling plastic would be able to produce more plastic. Unfortunately, the plastic made with the extender, when left in sunlight for extended periods of time became incredibly toxic, and a lot of children had died from it. It was on my second reading that I noticed the name of the author. It stuck in my head, because it sounded familiar, and then I realized why: the author was on the lists I had been reading earlier. I looked back through the paperwork, and found him, listed as deceased.

Exploring the old house of an old man.

     Gregory's house was a very old house. It must have been put in in the fifties, at least, and hadn't been taken care of very well. The wooden floors creaked, and had cracks between the planks. The paint in his kitchen was peeling, two different layers, yellow, then an old sage green, finally revealing the old fashioned plaster underneath. It was amazing to me to think that anyone had been living here at all. But the signs were there that Gregory had been living here not more than a few years ago. The furniture was still arranged, and though it was covered in a thick cake of dust, the couches in his living room were fairly new, with only the faintest imprint of a sitter in them. The fireplace was made of old red bricks, with cracks in the mortar, and lichen growing on the mantle. The back door had been broken in long before we arrived, and the screen had been torn in, down at raccoon height. There were leaves scattered around the floor, and it felt like we had broken into a ghost's home. All through the house were small reminders of the man who had lived there. His copper pots, tarnished now, but hung by order of size, the photographs he had taken himself, of beautiful lakes, and his beautiful wife. Even she was left behind, resting in an urn on the mantle. That place broke my heart. It was a beautiful old house, where two people had really loved one another, and something had torn that apart. We just weren't sure yet what had done it.
     Allen searched the house carefully, wandering through each room, shining his flashlight into cupboards, sifting through closets, lifting up furniture. He didn't seem to find what he was looking for, but he was determined to find it. He and Otis sniffed through the whole house while I went to get something to eat. When I returned to the house with food from a shop nearby, he and Otis were sitting in an upstairs bedroom. Resting against the wall, caught in a green blur of sunlight filtering through the leaves of a tree branch that had pushed itself through the window, he looked defeated. I offered him food, and he ate it, begrudgingly. I guess he thought that Gregory would have another clue for him, another breadcrumb to lead him to answers. The fact that the house was empty sent him back under his raincloud, and he was sulking again. We spent the night in that dusty house, and sat in that room all night.
     The next morning, I woke up first, and grabbed breakfast. When I got back, Allen was still asleep, and Otis was curled up against him. I waved a breakfast burrito around their head,s but neither of them even wiggled, so I ate my own, and killed some time. I decided that I would try to find something that Allen might have missed. I definitely didn't expect what I found. I walked to the bathroom, to snoop around, and then I walked around the corner to the kitchen, and realized that something felt a bit off. I walked back and forth, and realized that the walls didn't match up. Somehow, the rooms were smaller than they should have been, and then I realized that they were spaced apart to far, and that in the wall between them, there must have been some sort of space. I started in the kitchen, running my hands all over the walls, looking for something that might get me between the walls. I came up empty handed, and headed to the bathroom next. I searched every inch of the wood-paneled walls, and didn't feel any latches, so I started searching other things around the room. There didn't sem to be any levers, or switches, or anything in the room that would open it. then, I got a bit desperate, and flung myself into the wall. I bashed it with my shoulder twice, and as I braced for my third charge, Allen came running down the stairs. Then, with a wild strength I borrowed from someone else, I charged the wall again, and cracked one of the slats.
     Allen came over to the wall, looking through the slat I had cracked open, and his eyes lit up. Allen ran up to his pack and brought back his crowbar, pointing out that I could have just grabbed it myself, and began to pry boards off. I took it from him, and told him to go eat his burrito. This was my discovery, and he wasn't getting the glory for it. He laughed at me, kissed my cheek, and ran back upstairs to share his breakfast with otis.

Leaving My Little Life

     After two more days of preparation, Allen, Otis and I left home. It was really sad, but I knew it was what I wanted to do. We packed up my little car, closed up my little house, and left my little life. I let Allen drive. He wanted to feel like he had some control over the situation, which was fine. Since I wasn't giving him a choice about company, I was giving him as many other choices as I could. I asked him where we were going, and he said he had been thinking about it for awhile. He told me about all of the clues he had gone through previously, and listed them off to me to see if I could think of anything. The heart, the key, the knife with the message "Dead End Drive, Whitney Texas" on it, The flash drive with the Omega symbol, the list from the servers, the voice recorder, and the formula. We mulled it over for awhile while Allen drove aimlessly east.
     I bunched my knees up against the dashboard, and my jeans rubbed my calves unpleasantly. I'm really more of a skirt and shorts kind of girl, but I needed Allen to see me as an adventure partner, so I was in pants. I suggested that we try another family on the list, and he pointed out that he didin't have the list anymore. He didn't want to back to the bank and ask. He was ashamed of having disappeared, and didn't want to re-join the others until he had something solid to show he was worth his mettle.
     Allen turned off the freeway suddenly, and headed the other way. I asked him where we were going, and he assured me he had a plan. Two days later we were in Riverside, California. Allen had taken me to his old home, and showed it to me. It was really a nice house, but we didn't stay long. We stayed there for one night, and in the morning, Allen went to get coffee. He took my laptop with him, and was gone for about an hour. I almost thought he wasn't going to return, but when he did, he was very excited.
     We piled back into the car and drove for about a half an hour to an old house tucked out of the way. Nobody seemed to live there, and I was more than a little nervous about sneaking into a stranger's home. Allen grabbed Otis' leash, checked that his new pistol was loaded, and asked me if I was coming. We snuck through a hole in the old chain-link fence, and headed through a very tree-filled, overgrown yard. Otis' tail barely showed over the high weeds, and I was suddenly glad to be wearing jeans. We snuck around the back door, and entered the home of Gregory Faulkner.

The Argument We Had Over Two Backpacks

     Allen panicked when he saw my bag. He ran to me in the living room shouting "no," over and over again. He started telling me how dangerous it would be, and how he couldn't protect me.
I told him I would be protecting him, too. I told him that we would take care of one another.
He backed away from me, begging me not to follow him, he was angry and scared. I had really set him off. He began shouting about everything that had happened to him, all of the injuries, and the people who had been killed.

I shouted back, which caught me off guard, that if i didn't know what I was getting into, I wouldn't be following him, and that it was because I knew how dangerous it would be that I couldn't let him go by himself!

He changed tactics on me then, trying to appeal to my life. He asked who would take care of Otis, and my home?

I replied quickly, because I had seen this coming. My house was on a vacation rental site, and my neighbor would take care of it, and The bakery had already agreed to hire me back if I came back.

He seemed stumped, he wasn't sure what he could say to get me to change my mind. So, instead, he forbade me to come with him. He said he would sneak away, and I'd never be able to follow him.

I got boastful, and laughed. Then I said something a bit hurtful, I think. I told him that was unlikely, because I had been able to follow him so far. I told him that I knew about his workouts under the bridge. I told him that I had seen him fall, and seen him curse, and seen him get back up. I told him that was why I had suggested walks, to get his legs in shape.

He was dazed. He didn't know I had followed him, he was embarrassed that I had seen him out there. Then he got quiet, and thoughtful, and looked down for a bit. We stood in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then he asked me if I meant it. If I was really going to follow him.

I didn't expect it, but I kissed him then, and he knew I would follow him anywhere.

How The man, The Dog and I Began To Prepare

     After the morning I saw Allen under the bridge, I felt like our relationship had changed. I mean, not from his perspective. He obviously didn't know I had followed him, but I think I had started to see him differently. Before that night, he had been broken, and tragic in a way. But afterwards, I could only see his determination, he was powerful and vital. It was a surprising change, really. I knew what it meant, though; Allen was not going to stay. As scared as he was, as full of regret, he would never let those people down.

     We started running at nights after that. I suggested that walking might be good for him, and I thought we could take Otis. He liked the idea, but soon walking became jogging became running. It was good for all of us, Otis was losing weight, I was feeling fitter, and Allen was more confident. it wasn't long before I felt him getting ready to leave. He wandered off during the days, and started coming back with money and gear. He was stowing it in my little garage, keeping it where he thought I wouldn't see. I think he was afraid to hurt my feelings. But I already knew I couldn't let him go by himself. I just couldn't do that to him. So, I started ordering things from the internet. I din't know what I would need, really, but I started looking through the things he was hiding, and started ordering from Amazon. I got some things for Otis, too. I wasn't going to leave my dog behind, he was too good for that. We spent a few weeks running, and the last two weeks secretly supplying ourselves. He didn't think I knew, but I did. Finally, I decided to let him know.

     It was about three weeks into march, and Allen had been living with me for almost eight weeks. Eight weeks of getting to know the walking contradiction that was Allen Bishop. It was eight weeks before Allen knew how I felt. The day he walked into the garage and found not one, but two backpacks ready to go.

The Night I Found The Man Under That Bridge Again.

     I looked all over the house for Allen that morning, but I didn't find him. I had to go to work, so I showered quickly and left. The sun was barely up when I left, and the grass was soaked. It was freezing cold, and Allen was somewhere out there. I was just going to have to find him later. Obviously he didn't want to be bothered.
     When I came home that night, Allen had reappeared, and was cooking dinner. He was standing in the kitchen, wearing one of my aprons and looking ridiculous. He smiled at me awkwardly, and went back to his cooking. I didn't ask him where he had been, because I didn't want to upset him again. But his shoes were muddy up the sides, so I assumed he had been at the creek. He didn't seem interested in talking abut it, and defected all of my questions. He was suddenly very interested in the bakery, as if I wouldn't notice that he was deflecting.
     It went on like that for a week. I'd wake up in the morning, and he'd be gone, and I'd come home and he'd be back, making dinner. It was a nice routine, honestly. After a week, however, I decided to see where he was really going. So, I woke up earlier than usual, and followed him to the creek. He stood in the shallow water without his shoes on, and I watched him. He was right under the bridge where I had found him initially, almost a month earlier. He stood quietly for a long time, reflecting on the place where i had found his broken body. Then, as if it was some ritual, he spat on the spot, and climbed the bridge. He hung from a pipe under the bridge, and began to do pull-ups. He was about ten feet in the air, holding himself above maybe two feet of moonlit water, with his frail legs dangling beneath him. He must have done a hundred pushups before he stopped, and to my surprise, dropped himself from the pipe, straight down. He landed with a thud, and his legs crumpled under him. He collapsed into the water, and I watched as he pulled himself back up, angry at himself for not being able to manage the fall. He started running in place in the water, splashing all around himself in a frenzy, and yelling at himself to be stronger. I watched him work out for about a half an hour, until the sun began to creep up, and I realized I had to go to work. I ran home, showered and dashed off for work.
     I spent the whole day at work thinking about him. He had been so determined, and so strong, but so frail at the same time. I couldn't understand what drove him, but I admired it. He was magnificent, really. I wish now that I had told him that more often.

How I made The Smile Disappear

     After loading Allen up with beer, I was conflicted. He was finally acting happy, and I really didn't want to ruin that. However, I had started the evening with a plan, so I decided to follow through. People used to tell me that I never followed through on things, so I had become set on finishing what I had started. I picked Allen up, set him against one arm of the couch, and he looked at me sadly. I think he knew what I was going to ask.

"What's next, Allen?"

     His grimace returned, and he was quiet again for a long time. It wasn't the comfortable silence we had been sharing for the past two weeks, it felt more like the room was filling with hot water, heat and pressure making every second more uncomfortable. Then Allen spoke, and pulled the drain, and the water rushed out.

"I can't go back. There's no point. I lost everything I had. I can't even face them now. I left Mike, I shot at him, for god's sake. He probably thinks I've turned against him. I just can't do it anymore"

     He had started to cry, and I didn't know what to do. I'm normally pretty good at handling emotional people, my friends always say that I am, anyway. But Allen, this, all of it was so different than any of that stuff. I couldn't get him to call Silas. He was ashamed. He had looked up to silas, and when he allowed himself to get captured like that, and abandoned Mike, he couldn't bear it. He couldn't tell Silas that he had escaped that train station. He cried on me for hours. The facade of the strong man melted away, and I realized what that package had done to him. He had been a kind, normal man, and finding that heart had broken all of that. He was covered in scars, and hid inside himself. I didn't push anymore. I left him alone, and when I woke in the morning, his wheelchair was still sitting next to the couch. He was nowhere to be found.

How I Got the Man to Smile

     He sat in that chair for a week, looking out the window. I mean, he ate, sometimes he would talk, but he was very introverted. He didn't actually tell me the details of the fight on the train. But whenever a train passed through town, I could see him shudder. He'd pull the blanket around himself a little tighter. He was a little bit traumatized. He and Otis got along very well. It seemed like Allen didn't wat to interact with people very much, but otis stayed with him, and they enjoyed each other's company. I guess I have this way about me, bringing in strays.

     I made soup on the second sunday Allen was with me. It's funny the details that stick out, but it was definitely soup. It's very comforting, soup and bread, which is why I made it. I was going to ask Allen about his plans, and I wanted him to feel comfortable. He was hunched over his bowl, dipping the crust of his bread into the broth, and taking large bites from it. That's when I asked him what his next step was. He sighed, and lowered his head. His scraggly hair hung into his bowl of soup, and I realized that comfort food was not going to be enough. He was really broken. Next step was wine. That always makes the truth come out. At least for me, anyway.

     We spent a lot of time together in silence. It was so comfortable, being silent around him. Most times I feel like I have to say something to fill the air, because if there's no sound, then the room feels empty. But with Allen, we never had to talk to make the room feel full and warm. He and otis would sit and read, and I'd browse the internet, and it was just good.

     It was the next friday when I tried wine. I came home from the bakery at about six, and brought food and booze with me. Otis was very excited, of course, because whenever I pick up dinner, I grab him something extra. I told allen we were having a movie night, and he seemed relieved to have something to do. The normalcy of it really warmed him, I think. I got him beer, and got myself a bottle of something white, and we started watching movies. The first thing I did was help him out of his wheelchair, and put him on the couch, which was the first time, besides showers, he had left the chair. We watched two movies, sitting on the couch, dog on the rug, glasses in hand.  He fell asleep, so I gave him a little shake, and he sat bolt upright, ready to defend himself. He saw it was me, and immediately relaxed. He was scary like that sometimes, but it got better with time. Finally, two movies, three hours, half a bottle of wine, and a six-pack of beers later, we let the credits run out. We were close together on the couch, and he was almost smiling, which I hadn't really seen him do the whole time he had been with me. Two weeks without a smile is very sad.

What I Learned Should Have Scared Me

     I visited Allen in the hospital every day for about a week before he woke up. I think it was the last weekend of January, Saturday, maybe, when I first met Allen. He was understandably startled to find himself in a hospital bed, and started to move frantically. But the pain of all his broken bones stopped him pretty quickly. I was just outside of his room when he woke up, and I rushed in. He was very confused, and asked where he was. I told him everything that I knew, and waited for him to tell his side of the story, but he didn't say anything, really. He told me that his name was Allen Bishop. That's the name he gave me at the time. I'm not sure when he took up the alias, but he waited almost a month before he trusted me with his real name. I told him that I had lied about being his girlfriend, and he said he understood, which I thought was surprising, but he asked me if we could keep it up for awhile. I was  taken aback a little, because I thought he was flirting with me. Then after a second I asked him point blank, how he had wound up under that bridge. He promised to tell me as soon as we got out of the hospital. I don't know what it was about Allen, but he really charmed me. Even though he was a complete mystery, and looked a bit like he may have been in trouble with the mafia, or somali pirates, I felt like I could trust him. So, I did.

     After another week of tests and physical therapy, they let Allen out of the hospital. I took him home in a wheelchair. We had spent the whole week getting to know one another, I would just sit in his room in my time off, and sometimes at night, and we would just talk. He didn't tell me about all of the dangerous business he had been involved in, but usually about who he had been before it had all started. He sounded like a really good guy, he was the outdoors type, and used to make stuff for fun. He was so charming, and even though he could barely move at first, he was all smiles while we talked. As I came to understand it, this was the first time he had really stopped moving for more than a couple of days. When I took him home, I made him take my bed, and I slept on my couch. It was saturday night that I took him home. I'm a baker, so I normally go to sleep early and wake up at about three in the morning, to get the bread proofing, but since it was sunday, I sat up with him. He told me everything he had hesitated to tell me before. Hearing him tell it all, the way he had been chased, the people he had hurt, and the things that he had discovered, I was terrified. He looked as scared as I did, and since he was stuck in a wheelchair, I knew he wasn't going to hurt me. He was just so sad. I guess most people who met Allen after the package arrived at his home thought he was a crazy person, or that he was a bad person, but I just saw him as a wounded spirit. He just needed to stop running awhile. Being as broken as he was helped him with that. He was stuck in that chair for much longer than he would have liked.

The Bloody Man I found By The Tracks.

    Hi everyone. I don't know how to introduce myself on here, because I read through everything, and I haven't been mentioned yet, which is awkward. A friend mentioned me in a comment a bit before Allen, um, before he died. It's weird to me that he's gone now. Anyway, my name is Jess, and as far as anyone can tell, I'm the next person to see Allen after the train station.

     I didn't have anything to do with all this conspiracy stuff before I met Allen. I was a baker's assistant in a small shop in a little town. My whole life was pretty normal, just me, and my dog living in a tiny house three blocks from a small creek. It was really great back there, at home. I would spend my weekends down by that creek with Otis, my dog. He liked to dig around and chase ducks, and I would daydream about finally writing my novel, and learning to paint, and all sorts of things like that. It was idyllic.

     It was on one of these trips that I found Allen under the bridge. The bridge had train track running across it, and we get trains coming through our town pretty regularly. Allen was laying in a flattened cattail plant, and was covered in blood, completely unconscious. There was a huge gash across his face, with blood dried all over. He looked like he had been there since the night before. Barely breathing. I called an ambulance, and told them to hurry, and they did. But that was as much as I told them. I was so interested in this guy, I mean he was a mystery to me, and I wanted to know more. I told the paramedics, when they got there that he was my boyfriend, and that he had gotten drunk and we had a little fight, so he left last night. Then I went on to detail how I had worried about him, and came looking. I didn't mention names, because I didn't know his yet, and instead I turned on the waterworks. They let Otis and I ride in the ambulance. Otis played his part really well, too, sitting there with his head on my knee, looking as worried as I looked sad.

     They took us to the emergency room, and started treating Allen asap. They did tons of x-rays, and basically decided that my boyfriend had probably been hit by a train last night. Apparently, with how many fractures he had, and how much blood he had lost, he was very lucky to be alive. He didn't have any I.D. on him, just three bullets in his coat pocket, and an empty knife holster (holder?) on his leg. I should have taken that as my cue to "break up" with him then and there, but curiosity had a very firm grip, and I was up to my neck in it now. They spent three hours tending to him before they moved him into a room, and told me that I should go home, and wait for a call. So I did. I took Otis home, made a little dinner, sat in my living room watching tv and sharing a bowl of popcorn with my dog.

Trainspotting

I circled the security room at the train station, and didn't know what to do. I called Silas, who told me to focus on learning what I can about the situation. I focused on it as well as I could. It was clear that Allen had known the person who had taken him, his demeanor, the way he had kept so calm, and the way he kept me back. It was too civil to be a random attack. This guy knew Allen, and knew what he was doing. I didn't know Allen's whole story, really, so I thought it may have been someone I had never heard of, or encountered. I started examining the security room, and I pulled up floor plans from the internet. There were about four ways out of there, so I started walking a route that took me past all of them, keeping my eyes peeled for anything. I called Silas again, and told him the few things I had figured out. He wasn't impressed, and suggested that I try to find a fifth entrance to the place, maybe break a window or something.

Just after he said it, i heard a bit of a scuffle on the other side of the station. My patrol of the building had gone wrong. I hung up on silas and headed for the other side of the station, full speed. Allen was being chased onto the tracks by the man who had grabbed him. I tore off after them, carrying all of our gear, stuck to my back in two backpacks. There were so many tracks at that station, and one tunnel. Allen Headed for the tunnel, and I followed Him as closely as I could. He zipped across the tracks, with the attacker right on his ass, and I fumbled along behind him. He fired his gun, and missed the guy, but nearly hit me, and I started moving to one side of him. Then he fired again, nowhere near the other guy, but still very close to me, and I realized that he wasn't aiming for the attacker, he was aiming for ME!  I panicked, and ducked behind a pillar to avoid his fire. Then, a train split the track between he and I. The attacker was on his side. I stepped out of cover, and tried to see what was happening. I couldn't see anything for a while, until I saw Allen on top of one of the trains, fighting the attacker. It was insane. The train began to move, and Allen tried to jump off, but the attacker grabbed his leg, and pulled him back, punching him hard across the face. I realize now that Allen shot at me to keep me back, to keep me safe. Because the guy who attacked him was a serious bastard. He beat Allen to a pulp, and held him on that train as it flew away, with allen's blood streaking along the top of the car. That was the last time that I ever saw Allen. The last interaction I ever had with him was dodging his bullets, and now I know he was saving my life.

 Silas says someone else is going to start posting on here, we're going to try to piece together what happened to Allen after the train. I know I've said some mean shit about him, but Allen Bishop was really a great guy, batshit crazy, but good. I hope we can tell this story, and i hope we can do him justice.

Train station

     See, trains are actually pretty awesome, you sit, relax, watch out the window, and nobody really bugs you. I love riding on trains, just taking your time and enjoying it. The bitch of trains is transfers. We had to swap trains twice on the way to chicago. It was the second stop that really messed with us.  We were hopping off of our second train, looking for our third, I don't even know what town it was, The station looked pretty familiar, but I mean, there's kind of a running aesthetic with train stations, so it could've been anywhere. Anyway, we were waiting on a bench, because our train wasn't due for an hour, and someone sat down next to allen. He was wearing a hoodie, so I couldn't really see his face at first. I thought it was a homeless guy, to be honest. Then, Allen stood up with him, and gestured for me to leave. I didn't know what was happening. The man in the hoodie had a fist pressed up against Allen's side, and I realized that the stranger had a gun pressed into him. They walked off, and I was fairly certain that Allen was about to be mugged. I figured, if I'm being honest, that Allen could handle a mugger, So I backed away from them, taking our bags with me. Then, the man with the gun pulled Allen into a security booth, and I realized something was genuinely going on. Not a mugging, something serious. I know that sounds weird to say that a mugging wasn't serious, but I hope you know what I mean. I ran to the door, but it was locked, and I couldn't get it open. It had all been so calm, I hadn't realized that anything serious was happening, but suddenly I was alone in a strange city, and Allen had been taken. We missed the train.

Regroup

We emerged from the woods about a week later, on Topanga canyon road. We looked, for all intents and purposes, like a pair of college guys who had just taken a long hike in the woods. We wandered into santa monica, and found a funky diner to have our first properly cooked meal in a week. We had some snack while we were hiding, but it wasn't much. We were more or less at a loss at this point. I mean, we knew what the formula could do, and we knew that people were hunting it. We didn't know what they wanted to use it for, but based on the effects it had had on that rat, it was nothing good. We also didn't have a car anymore, and most of our stuff was gone. We decided that the thing for us to do was regroup. Allen called Silas to see where he was, and what was going on with him. He said that he didn't have much that he could say on the phone, but he was headed back to the bank. We checked our cash supplies, and decided we'd meet him there.

We were on terror lists now, so a plane trip was out of the question. Which left us with two options: buy a used car, or hop a train. We decided to play it frugal, and take a train. It's about two and a half days from L.A. to Chicago by train, and it costs about $800 a person. When I get a chance to write again, I'll explain why it took us almost a week.

Helicopter

     Have you ever seen a police chase on the news? The car seems like it's going so slow, you think "Why aren't they trying to run?" They are. see, it's just like planes in the sky, the farther away they are, the slower they appear to be moving. Those people are driving a hundred miles an hour, but from the chopper, it looks like their car is powered by flintstone feet. When you're in the car, though, everything speeds by.

     The hardest part of the whole thing is trying to figure out how to lose the chopper. Cars are easy to ditch, since you can usually blend into a large group of cars, and if you drive smart enough, they'll lose sight of you, and then you split in a way they're not expecting. A helicopter, on the other hand, has a crazy field of view, so it's more than a matter of driving in front of a semi-truck. If you're clever, though, and I tend to think that Allen was a pretty clever guy, you find a way to make that height useless.

We Shot up the 405, with the helicopter and several cars tightly in tow, and made our way toward Mulholland Drive. Allen told me to get unbuckled, and to start packing our gear, especially anything identifying, and everything related to the hunt, into as few bags as I could manage. He, meanwhile, was flicking around on my phone, looking at maps. I grabbed everything I could, opening the back seat to get to the trunk, and digging through everything. Living in a car can really take a toll on your tidiness. I had two bags packed when we got off of the freeway, and got onto Mulholland, Which we were only on for a couple of minutes. The cars weren't behind us anymore, but the helicopter had tight eyes on us. Allen warned me that we were about to get into some real dangerous shit, and I laughed, as he pulled us into someplace very residential. He switched on cruise control, and steered as he put on his pack, and shoved any last things he could manage into it. Then, he turned us into some little side street/culdesac/suburban nightmare, and told me to be ready to jump. He swung a hard left through a side yard, and shouted while the car was under some trees, and we both rolled out of the car. One of the smaller bags I had with me snagged in the door, and I almost got pulled along, but I tore it off my arm, luckily. We dashed for cover as the car continued down the path it was on. The chopper followed it, and we scrambled away. The car headed down a dirt road toward the "Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir" which yes, I did look up afterward. The bag that was caught on the door was full of cash, and scattered bills all down the road. We didn't stop to think about it, we still had plenty of cash, and, more importantly, we had to get the hell out of there.

     We headed to opposite direction of the car, hiding in the trees, and making our way toward the 405 again. We spent a long time hiking through the very posh woods out there, just trying to outrun the search crews radiating from the crash of our car. It was another long while before we had any contact with the world. But we spent a lot of time sitting around small, dark fires thinking. I waited four months before I ever found out what happened to Kevin. I've never felt guiltier about anything.

UCLA

When last we saw our heros, the scientist at Ucla had locked us into his lab. Allen freaked, and charged the door, and the scientist, who was clearly shaken by Allen's berserker attitude tried to compose himself. As soon as he saw what the compound we had sent him was capable of, he called the FBI. He alerted them that he had found potential terror suspects, and they had arranged this trap. He then turned and ran.

Allen stood by the door a moment, then he smashed his fist against the glass of the door. It was one of those ones they have at schools, with the narrow slit of wire-reinforced glass. He didn't get through it, but he did crack it up, and messed up his hand pretty badly. He barely batted an eyelash. He grabbed his gun from his coat and shot through the lock, nearly knocking kevin deaf. The door hinged inwards, but with some tugging and jimmying, we had it open. We split down the hallway immediately, only to turn the corner into a group of vest-wearing policemen. We turned back around ,and got going through another corridor. Then up a set of stairs. then through two more hallways, until we found ourselves stuck in a classroom. We barricaded up the door, and we could hear the cops outside smashing at the door already.

We were cornered in the classroom on the second floor, and I had no idea what we were going to do. They were smashing at the door, breaking the desks we had shoved against it. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. when I finally did, I found Kevin standing by an open window, with no sign of Allen anywhere. Kevin looked at me, and stared back out the window. Allen had jumped right out, and made it in one piece. He had drawn his pistol and was gesturing for us to follow. I didn't know what to do, I could make the jump, but I knew that Kevin would never make it that far, the guy was 65, after all. We started searching the room for some way to get him down, but there wasn't really anything. We found some power cords, and tied them together, and then to an anchor in the room. I made the jump, and then Kevin made to follow me. He was about halfway down when a surge protector cracked under his weight, shaking the makeshift rope, and shaking him loose. He fell maybe 6 feet, but it was enough. He twisted his ankle on impact, and his foot was twisted all sorts of crazy.

I ran to him, and slung him over my shoulder, Allen started running ahead, like he was going to leave us. But when the cops burst from the door nearest us, he turned and opened fire on them. I ran as fast as I could, but my body wasn't used to the extra weight, too much time on the computer. I was moving so slowly, I knew, and the cops were gaining on me. One of them caught Kevin's good ankle and pulled. I was so top-heavy that I fell backwards. Another cop was on to of me in no time, and before I knew it, Allen was there again, swinging a stick he had gotten from somewhere. He bashed one cop upside the head, and sent blood spraying everywhere, and with his other hand, he grabbed my arm from the growing dog pile of cops. I tried to go back for kevin, but he was covered in cops, and shouting "Go, go, get out of here!" So we did. We ran as quickly as we could, and made it back to the car. Allen jumped in to drive, and we shot off, with nothing in our minds but escape. We wouldn't think of Kevin again until we were safe. But we weren't there yet, because we could hear the search chopper overhead.

January 12, 2011

     January twelfth we got a call back from a scientist at UCLA. He had been working over the formula for about a week, and said he had synthesized a small amount of it. As he put it, the results of his tests with the chemical were terrifying. he didn't want to say more over the phone, and wanted us to visit his lab. We had been travelling around at this point, killing time and trying to make the best out of being fugitives, so we were in northern california. It took us most of the night to get to the university.
   When we got there, we parked in the back, and made our way into his lab. We walked through a small room where there were cages filled with rats. they were kinda like fish tanks. About half of the rats were dead. and the ones in the chambers labeled "Control" watched us walk by. We made it into the doctor's office and he greeted us. Then he lead us to another room where he had been working. The formula was written on the wall, over three different chalkboards, each piece of it broken up into sub-compounds. It looked like a scene from a movie, the scientist, surrounded by his scrawlings on the walls. He took us to a table in the center of the room, one of those chemist countertops, with the burners and crap, and brought out another rat in a cage. He explained to us that the chemical we had sent him was a form of plastic, but that it was modified heavily. The reader's digest version is that the plastic could be made inexpensively, but extended the usability of normal petroleum plastic. It was a filler plastic, so you could make more plastic, but at a smaller price. But that wasn't all he had found out about it. There was one portion of the formula that didn't sit right with him. He felt that if it were combined with certain compounds, it would become very volatile. So, he had gathered a sample of those compounds, and done an experiment. What he discovered then is what had scared him so badly. The compound, when mixed with certain plastic explosives, would create a unique compound. Then he showed us the scary part.
     He placed the rat in a small box with windows on it, and used tongs to insert a portion of the compound, mixed with the plastic explosives, into a small container that was also inside the box. He closed the lid, sealed it up, and made sure we were looking in through the window. Then he detonated the explosive. Really, it was a very small explosion, smaller than most firecrackers. The rat seemed startled, and moved further away from the explosion, but seemed otherwise fine. For about thirty seconds, we thought it was. Then the rat started moving around the box very quickly. It started running laps, as quickly as it could, until one of its legs stopped moving right, and it began to limp. Soon, half of its body was running, and half was dragging on the floor. Then a thick foam poured from its mouth, and it stopped moving.
    We were, understandably, shocked. The scientist explained that the compound was a neurotoxin that didn't seem to activate until it was combined with the plastic explosive, and then detonated. Then, he calmly walked to the door, stepped outside, and locked us in.

Round Room

     We woke the next morning not sure about what to do next. Should we try to build the room from the message? Should we hunt down more clues? We just didn't know what to do. It wasn't until I suggested that we take the formula to a chemist that Allen seemed Excited. But He didn't like the idea of taking the original, it was too valuable, it was evidence against whoever the enemy was. He referred to an enemy all the time by this point. We didn't know who the enemy was, but there was definitely an enemy.
    Anyway, we decided to build the chamber, and copy the formula from the walls. Then we'd take one of the copies to a chemist. So we built it. We rented a small warehouse, the seedy sort of place that doesn't ask questions when you rent it for a week with cash. We bought a bunch of thin plywood and small boards and put the room together. It was a jury-rigged sort of thing, but it held up well enough. Then we spent three days copying it onto small pieces of paper, and then moving it onto one big sheet. It was gigantic, and I didn't understand any of it. None of us did, but we had it laid out flat now. So, by the first day of December, 2010, we had the formula. We took it to a kinko's place and got three copies made. Then we went to three schools that had good chem programs, and Hoped for the best. We really couldn't do anything else for another month. It was january 12th 2011 before we heard anything back from the schools. We spent most of that time laying low, so there's nothing really to tell.
I'll get to the results of the tests next post, but I wanted to get this out first:

I just want to apologize to everyone about that last post. I shouldn't have said that about Allen. I meant it, but that doesn't mean I should have said it. I think by the time I knew him the paranoia of being stalked had really affected Allen. I don't mean offense to the people who knew him before all of this started. I just knew the man I traveled with. I personally didn't really like him, but I knew that he, and everything he was doing was important. I know that more now than ever. So, I'm sorry to Allen and everyone who knew him.
so... yeah.

The Lightning Strike at Thunder Road.

Allen, Keith and I were back on the road as fast as we could manage. Which is pretty fast, as it turns out. Robbing a bank will do that to you, put a little speed in your step, y'know? So, we were in California within three days. Thunder Road is not a real road, you know. It's actually kindof a strip of dirt, not a real place at all. It's marked on google maps, but I guess that's more for city planning. We scoured the area in the picture for about a day, and when the sun went down, we found a hotel, and got some food. Keith and I didn't know what we were looking for, but allen was determined. We spent two days like that, sifting through a desert. There was a small trailer-town nearby, and that's where we found what we wanted. It was the Omega symbol spray-painted on the back of a sign. We dug around the sign that night, a huge pit, actually. But there was nothing there. We were stumped again. We filled the pit, and stewed on it for a day. Keith studied the post that day, all day. He took notes on everything about it he could think of. Then he noticed the sticker on the back of it it looked like a normal I.D. sticker on a stop sign, you've seen them, with the manufacturer, date of printing, etc. Except for the fact that all of that info was changed. The manufacturing date was actually a time, and one of the slots said 500 yards. So, we waited till the time marked on the post, and stared out from the post for about 500 yards, but we didn't see anything to indicate to us. The next day, we tried again, and we figured it out. We used the shadow of the post at that time, and moved in a line from that point for 1500 feet. We marked the spot, and came back after dark.  We dug for fifteen minutes, and found it: A small metal plate, in the shape of the omega symbol, with three numbers welded onto the front of it. 184. Allen flipped his shit. We had finally found the clue for the little electronic device. We went back to the hotel and punched it in. Then the machine beeped out these words:

"The chamber should be a round room, 12 feet in diameter, and 8 feet high. Place the light three feet from one side of the wall, and two feet off of the ground. Use a 200 watt lightbulb. Align the triangle tick marks on the plate with one another, and point them toward the far side of the room. This is what they have been keeping from everyone. This is the formula that killed them."

We went to bed that night, pondering what we had heard. Allen listened to it again and again that night, sitting in the empty bathtub. I wasn't sure he even slept anymore. He scared me a lot. I'm almost glad he's gone.

Escape

So, escaping a bank job is even trickier than getting in. Getting in is always easy. Here's the trick we used. It'd only work once anyway, so I don't really feel bad telling you. Basically, everything in a bank is computerized, actually, basically everything in a city is computerized nowadays. So, we gathered our hostages and headed for the front door. See, cops don't like to mess with people with hostages, and they don't like to negotiate. But, if you don't let them try, they don't really know how to handle you. So, we just walked out the front door with our guests, before they had even gotten in a call to try to talk us down. We seriously just walked out, and grabbed a cab we had called for, bringing along one of our hostages. I mean, honestly, how fucking great is that? It was scary as hell, of course, but it worked. they didn't know what to do with us. Then came the tricky bit. I should have mentioned, when we walked out, Allen showed off a little backpack he had brought. he placed it against the rear bumper of the taxi before we drove off, and waved at the cops, smiling and pointing at the backpack. He did a kindof "Boom" gesture and laughed as he got in the car. Then we left in our cab. So, we had left the cops sitting at the bank, scared to death of the bomb we had left behind us, and drove off in a cab. Allen had placed it so that between us and the cops was a bomb, which of course they were going to take heed of before making chase. So, in the meantime, I texted The old man, and told him to fire up the program I had built that week. The Gps tracking number of this cab, (which by the way, is easy to look up, ) was suddenly splitting down several different roads. I mean, there are all sorts of bits of info that cabs drop out, and I had researched a lot of them, and set up a program to dump out decoys. Then, we had the cabby drop us off at a random location and gave him a huge tip for his trouble, and the fare to return the bank teller to her car. Then we split off down a few alleys and trick paths we had looked up, and bought a gallon of gas before meeting back up at the car. We filled up the car and got the fuck out of town.

Bank job

     See, the secret to a bank job is never to mess with people. You see in the movies, or on tv, the robbers always bust in during the day, guns blazing, themed masks, and lots of shouting. A good bank job takes place at closing, when the only people you'll encounter are staff. We didn't bother with a theme, or anything like that, because we didn't have the cash to buy masks, and that sort of thing makes a trail. I don't know if you know this, but they can track cash now. Anyway, when a bank is closing up, the manager has to lock everything up. But the trick is, you have to get in, get your pay and get out in a certain timeframe, because all vaults have time-locks on them. It's a technique invented in the cowboy days. The vault locks itself automatically at a certain time, so that you can't force the manager to open it for you after hours. They used to make very intricate locks with clockworks inside of them. Now it's all done by computer. Anyway, we tore up a blanket we had found behind a house, and cut it into masks. They were uncomfortable, but they covered our faces.
     It was a monday, so there wasn't a lot of business going on, they weren't holding the door for anyone. The manager usually locks up at five, so that the cashiers can count up, and get everything locked up for the night, without people wandering in. That was basically the crux of our plan. The manager moved to the door to lock up and two men with guns pulled the door away from him. We each trained our gun on him and told him to lock up as usual. We stepped in and he locked it behind us. That part of the plan made me nervous, but Allen had apparently given this a lot of thought. The manager was told to leave the key in the door, and he did. Allen very calmly announced that we were robbing the bank, and that everyone should put their hands up. The lexan around the bank protected the tellers from our guns, but they all did as they were told anyway. The manager lead us to the door that opened to the back of the bank, and the tellers walked out into the center of the bank. We sat them down in the middle. Allen put me on guard while he and the banker walked the back. He looted the registers, and then they headed for the safe. It was 5:07, the vault locked at five thirty. We were making very good time. Allen packed everything into bags and headed for the door. Just in time for the sirens to arrive. The police headed for the front door, but it was locked. Thank goodness. Allen took over guard duty, and I headed for their computers. We figured if we were going to take the risk, we'd better make some good out of it for someone. First of all, I formatted the security computers. That way they couldn't track our faces, or anything else we had done in the bank. Then I headed to a teller's computer. Allen made one of them log in, and then I got systematic. I erased the details of the money we had stolen. They lost track of every serial number that'd gone through the bank, so that the money couldn't be tracked. Then, while I was in the terminal, I did a little robin-hooding, and destroyed as many Details as I could, so the banks couldn't track the loans they had made. Basically, everyone who had ever borrowed money from the bank was getting out scott-free. So, instead of a hundred thousand or so in cash, we kinda stole millions. But most of it we gave away. We've been debating about whether or not that was a good thing ever since. Well, I mean, we used to debate it. Anyway, let's build some suspense for this, since I have got to stop writing soon, and the escape is going to take some time to detail. Here we are, two guys with guns, in a bank full of hostages, and two duffel bags full of cash, Standing in a bank surrounded by cops. Our only help  was a sixty year-old man sitting in a gassless car with a laptop, four blocks away.

Smallville

Now, let me clarify here, I say "stranded in oklahoma" and you immediately think of a broken down old car steaming on the side of a tiny road in the middle of a corn field. That's not where we were . It was a smallish town. There aren't that many freeways now without towns along them. So, we found ourselves in Smallville USA without any gas in our car. We Weren't exactly sure what to do, so we asked around to see if anyone knew where to find short-term work in the area, just enough to afford some gas. Basically, there wasn't anywhere like that. We spent two nights sleeping in our car before Allen figured out how to solve the problem of money. It was absolutely insane. Allen had decided to rob a bank. The way he looked at it, we were already fugitives, and as long as we had a supply of cash, we could keep running forever. We resisted at first, honestly, I swear. But, there's something about crazy that is incredibly persuasive. We decided to pick off cash from a national branch, one of the big ones that got the bailout, that way we wouldn't be hurting the town specifically. Plus, as Kieth pointed out, that way it was more like reclaiming our own money. He was a funny sort of guy. Anyway, that was our plan. We spent the next week dumpster diving for food, and sleeping in the car while we planned our strategy. It was actually pretty good, to be honest. I'll fill you in more soon, I've got to keep moving, and it is hard as balls to type on a touch-screen.

Like the Arrow, Off in a Shot

     We sat in our hotel, Staring at the collection of stars on the wall, and trying to understand the constellations that they made. Non of us were chemists, so we had no idea what any of it meant, and it was still warped in places, like, none of it fit on the walls, but it was fascinating to look at. Allen stayed up all night scouring the walls, looking for an indicator. Kieth and I went to sleep, but he wandered around the room all night looking for a sign, maybe a signature. He didn't find it. The formula, while interesting, was another dead end. We really only had one option: look for more clues in the photographs. Unfortunately, we had run out of pictures with gps tags. the rest of the pictures we had were scanned photographs. so we started scouring them for any information we could pull from them. We poured over the photographs for a day, and I sent them back to my friends at the bank, to see if they could get anything, but it didn't seem like there was anything to be gotten. To this day, I'm not sure how they figured it out, but about two days after we started, the guys at the bank sent me a link to a google maps location. Unfortunately, it was back in california, Thunder Road, in 29 palms.
     Kieth and I wanted to wait another night, and grab some food and crap before we headed off, but Allen was over that. He packed up and shoved us into the car as soon as we had a destination. That was that. We started driving immediately. It was somewhere in Oklahoma, just past tulsa, I think, that we ran out of gas. It was somewhere before that that we ran out of money.
     Suddenly, without knowing it, Kieth and I had let a madman strand us in the middle of Oklahoma with no money, and no transportation.

The Arrow

The next place that we had any GPS coordinate on was this graffiti covered bar called the arrow, in new york. This place kinda rules. I actually had a stupid hard time looking it up just now. It's listed on google as "The Rook" which makes a lot more sense than the arrow, when you think about it. I see why Greg chose it. Allen didn't waste any time. He started tearing the place apart. We showed up during the afternoon, so there wasn't anybody in there, just a bartender, and us. Allen walked up to him and started asking all sorts of questions, I don't remember half of it, I mean this was a year ago. It's hard for me to remember a lot of this stuff, honestly. But I do remember what he did next. He pulled his gun on the bartender. He was nuts, I swear. The bartender was, of course, freaked, and lead Allen downstairs. In the basement there was a painting on the wall and behind that was a safe. It was full of cash. The guy thought we were robbing him. Allen just started laughing. dude was dark. Finally we convey to the guy what we're looking for. He sighs, like he's relieved and takes us to one of the booths. Says something that tells me we're not the first ones to come looking for this crap, and asks to see the knife. I don't know what Knife, but allen pulls this big old thing off of his calf, the bartender smiled. Then he takes the mirror off the wall this time, upstairs in the bar. He hands us a sheet of steel about the size of a sheet of paper. He basically says that the first people to come asking were cops, but his instructions were not to give it to anyone with any badges. Only to the person with the knife. he asked what the knife said and allen replied "Dead End Drive" that chilled me, the way he said it. I think it spooked the bartender, too because he suddenly remembered the gun, and tried to get us the hell out. We obliged, but not before Keith shoved a twenty into the tip jar.
We got a hotel, which wasn't cheap in new york, and we sat down to study the plate. it was hard to make out what was on it. It was clearly punched through all over, riddled with tiny holes, and if you held them up to a light, you could see shapes, but they were so small that we couldn't make them out. Allen decided we had caught the middle of a trail again, until Keith made a connection. Well, it was half of it, anyway. He pulled the shade off of one of the bedside lamps in the hotel room and stuck the metal next to it. Suddenly, the room was darker, and across one wall was a scatter of specks of light, connected by weird lines. It still didn't make sense, but it was clearing up. The metal was a formula.

Battleship Cove

     Battleship cove is a pretty badass little tourist place, full of old decommissioned ships. But, the GPS data on the picture we had was pretty pretty precise, so we new which ship we were going to, the USS Massachusetts. This thing was a big hulking beast of a boat, bristling with guns. We bought visitor passes and spent hours wandering through the whole boat. we knew it was somewhere in the front-ish middle of the ship, but none of us could really tell what the picture was, or what deck it was taken on. There's a lot to get lost in inside a battleship. But, finally we found what we were looking for, a gun loader. I guess underneath those big damn guns, they have machines designed to load the guns. I always imagined it was a dude down there shoving the shells in, like you see in old ww2 footage. but we had found the place. we scoured that little room, looking for anything. we found some numbers engraved on the wall, but that didn't mean anything to us, and for all we knew they were part of the ship. But we wrote them down anyway. There was d6, 193, and B19. they were all in different places, and all written down in different ways. Finally, Allen decided to do what we were all afraid we might have to. He climbed into the pipe where the bullets go. We saw his feet disappear and didn't hear anything from him. after a moment or two, we did hear something, but it wasn't Allen. A tourgroup was coming through. We didn't know what to do, so we feigned interest in the display, and tried to act cool. Then we got a text from Allen inside the tube. All he said was to sneak out and meet up at the car, so we joined the tourgroup, and casually strolled out. When Allen met us out at the car, he was kindof greasy, but he was smiling. He had a small black and red box in his hand. he opened it up, and we saw nine buttons along an lcd screen, with a speaker to one side.

     So, we took the box to a hotel and set it up on a table. it was small, and the plastic felt old. We opened the top and looked at the buttons: On/Reset, yes, no, Repeat/clear, and the bottom row counter from 1 to 4, and then an enter button. So, we turned it on, it played a weird phrase, and then waited for us to do something. So, we started putting in the numbers from the gun room. Nothing. So, Allen started trying to remember the other numbers from everything he had encountered up to that point, but that didn't do anything either. It was real bullshit, let me tell you. Finally, Allen decided that we had come to the wrong place first. so we headed for the next place with GPS coordinates. I don't really know what drove him, honestly, but that man never stopped. It scared me a little, how determined he was.

Mike's Second Email

So, okay, the three of us, Me, Allen and the old guy, Kieth, were driving away from the house, as fast and casually as we could, when we saw three cop cars zip past us in the other direction. it was pretty spooky how close we had come. We drove to a hotel and sat Kieth down. Allen wasn't done asking him stuff. He told me I needed to leave. He was pissed and it scared the hell outta me, so i didn't argue. I went for a walk, and about an hour later, Allen texted me that it was alright for me to come back. When i did, he and the old dude were all buddy-buddy. I don't know what they talked about, or what happened, but something Kieth had said had soothed Allen's nerves. It weirded me out, and nobody ever explained it to me, but suddenly I was the third wheel in their bromance.

Regardless, Allen had decided to pick up with the computer. He asked me to look at the pictures on the computer and see if I could figure out where any of them were. No problem, of course, at least two of them had GPS coordinates on their exif data. Sometimes I'm surprised by the amount of data people let their iPhone pin on their pictures. Whatever. The picture we decided to go to was in Massachusetts. It wasn't the closest picture, but it's date was the soonest, so it seemed like a good starting place. We spent about a week on  the road, Me, Allen and the old dude, and after a blowout in Nebraska, we ended up at Battleship Cove, in Fall River Massachusetts.