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.
