Uno and Fog: A Last Minute Phone Call

We spent the next three weeks searching for where James may have gone to ground, with no luck.  The Fog went to meet with the parents, but they only talked to him on holidays and he hadn’t been home in years.  To say their relationship was strained was an understatement.

While I had spent several hours trying to figure out the password to the abandoned laptop, when The Fog got back he just ripped out the hard drive and attached it to a drive reader.  I felt kind of stupid when he did that.

The laptop had tons of information stored on it, dissertations on various ancient writings, their origins, connections between ancient architecture, including the possibility to trade interactions between ancient empires over great distances.

There were pictures of various landmarks on New Amsterdam and the two of us spent several nights going to each and seeing if we could find any hint of where he could be, or where he planned his final sacrifice.  I don’t know exactly I was expecting, some strange symbol painted in blood on the architecture, fountains or archway he had found interesting.  Perhaps some strange hooded figure watching in the shadows which when followed would lead me to him, or was in fact him waiting for us to find him for some epic type of battle.

What I found was people going about their lives, tourists, and an intimate familiarization with many of the city’s landmarks, parks, historic buildings.  I wondered if James had intentionally sent us on a wild goose chase.  If he had in fact planned far enough in advance to set something like this up and that he was watching us in the distance.

It was very frustrating.  The rest of the time was spent searching for where he could be hiding.  One of the problems we faced was there was too many ways for him to hide.  Abandoned buildings, empty apartments, old forgotten passages in the subways, tent cities under the bridges, fleabag hotels and that was assuming he had used to sorcery to mind control some family to serve him or found some other way to hide.

I didn’t think he had left the city, but there was no guarantee he was still close. It was maddening and frustrating, as the time for the final sacrifice approached and we were no closer to finding who or what.

I found my job annoying during this time and me irritability bleed through my interactions with my co-workers.  I was, I noticed, being avoided during this period of time and I was glad for it.

I was in my office and it was on the day of the sacrifice, while the feeling of dread and failure was clouding me with foreboding, that I got a break when my phone rang.

“Michael?”

“It took me a moment to recognize the voice on the other end, “David?”

“Yes, you told me to call if I saw James.  I have.”

“Where?”  I felt excitement.  Finally.

“That’s just it, I just catch glimpses of him, but when I look he isn’t there anymore.  Its creepy.”

That feeling of dread returned in full, “Where are you?”

“On campus.”

“O.k., is there somewhere with a lot of people that’s close that would be easy for me to find?”

“I’m not far from the coffee shop we met at.”

“Perfect go there as quickly as you can, I will meet you there.”  I closed the connection and started moving,

As I left the office I called The Fog  and filled him in and I left Ms. Teri a message.  I started pulling in power, syphoning off all the circuits in the building.  I skipped the elevator and hit the stairs, and started accelerating.  When I was at my fastest I estimated that I could act almost six time faster that a normal, maybe three times more than someone trained like The Fog and I could run.

I zipped down the stairs, put on my mask, and fuzzed up the security cameras.  I was starting to think there might be something to wearing tights.  My top speed was somewhere around 120 miles an hour and I hit it as soon as I was on the streets.

I wondered if I was going to be fast enough.