The Meeting

I knocked on the door of Adam’s hotel room to find a gun pressed to my forehead. I’d expected him to be angry I ‘followed’ him, although technically since I arrived before him he followed me, but not this angry and after the initial shock I put my hands up and said so. He was immediately apologetic. It turns out he was expecting Proxy attack. A significant amount of the hotel staff turned out to have also had a similar experience and he’d been smothering any altercations with the police with hundred dollar bills for the employees and a flash of an FBI badge for the cops themselves. Which I couldn’t believe worked but wasn’t going to knock.

As part of this anti Proxy demeanour, he’d trapped the window with a flashbang, which I only found out when I pulled back the curtain. Thanks, mate. He also threw a grenade at me. I knew it wouldn’t be live but that doesn’t help the small bit of the brain that goes ‘ohshitgrenade’ regardless. I instinctively batted it away and then glared at him.

All in all, not a good start.

“So how did you find me?” he said.

"You've got a pretty distinctive getup. All I had to do was ask people "Hey, have you seen a bloke who looks like he walked out of a nineteen thirties detective novel go by?"" I replied.

I knew he probably had the coordinates already, but I couldn’t resist the chance to Sherlock Holmes it up. I laid out a map of the area I’d marked beforehand over the bed.

“Okay. The lab is definitely not within this radius." I pointed to the area surrounding the town that looked like a circle made to fit the mountain contours. "This is the distance that can be traveled in a night on foot."

"But, the lab must get its supplies from somewhere, since a self sufficient complex would take up enough land to get noticed. Thus it must be within this area, a certain distance from a road, any road." I pointed to a different section, marked in red.

“And they'd need a supply of fresh water, so they would be within this area, close enough to rivers to get water, yet far enough away to avoid flash floods." A third, this time blue.

“And of course, they are definitely somewhere in the Hunter Mountains according to you, so here are the places where these conditions overlap.” I took a marker from my pocket and circled five areas.

“I’m glad you’re going through all this trouble, but it’s right here,” Adam pointed to one of the areas. I crossed the others out.

It turns out he purchased a pistol for me. He’d chosen it because it had a ‘medical and science symbol’ engraved on it, which turned out to be a caduceus and not the Rod of Asclepius. I made a joke about being mistaken for an Oathbreaker anyway. I don’t know how to use it, and while he offered to train me we don’t really have that sort of time, so it’s going to be gathering dust in my pack in lieu of my trusty taser.

Amongst other things, we decided we’d make a start tomorrow afternoon, and then I left.