Crow (NoochZahHutt)

Part Eighteen

Preston escorted me to the payphone, much to Rob's dismay. He showed me the trick to using it without paying for it and then left (back to his unofficial boyfriend I presumed). I tapped the number into the keypad carefully.

"Hello. Your call to SOUL LABORATORIES has been forwarded to an automatic..."

Straight to voicemail. I hung up. At least I had some information about V now: they worked at a place called SOUL Laboratories.

I turned around, starting to walk back, when someone running at a very high speed crashed into me. Neither of us fell down, but the person running had halted in their tracks.

"Oh! Excuse me, sorry, I'm just-" He paused. "PETEY?"

"Choco?" I asked, perplexed. Choco stumbled back in surprise.

"Oh...my god..." Choco was breathing hard. "Thank fleep you're okay. My sixth sense...it started going off like crazy and all I knew was that something bad happened and it involved you."

"Oh," I said quietly. "You didn't have to come all the way back here for me..."

"Are you JOKING?!" Choco yelled. "Of course I did! Anything bad happening that involves you is bound to be worth a trip back to Genesis, especially with Nooch and Crow's attacks and..."

I held up my hands signaling for him to stop talking. "I get it. While you're here, can I ask a question?"

"You just did," Choco joked.

I sighed. "Aaaaanyway, do you know what SOUL Laboratories is?"

"Never heard of it," Choco said. "It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel."

"Yeah..." I said, "...it really does. But as far as I know, it's a real place, and someone called 'V' works there."

"Someone called 'V'?" Choco asked. "How do you know them?"

"They sent me a letter regarding Nooch," I explained. "You see, I kind of, did something...questionable."

Choco paused and crossed his arms like an angry, passive-aggressive mother. "Please explain."

I exhaled slowly, running my fingers through my hair. "Come back to HQ with me and I'll tell you everything."

~~~

I lead Choco up to my room and began to explain the situation. "...I ripped out the part that controlled his sight, hearing, and government information, and I crushed it to bits..."

"YOU WHAT?!" Choco exclaimed.

"...I'm not done yet," I interjected. "And then I hooked up his 'brain', I guess you could call it, to Lachlan's laptop and started communicating with him through text. It worked, but..."

I paused.

"But? But what?" Choco said worriedly.

"...but he didn't want to continue to exist if he would only be able to communicate like that. He said that he didn't like the dark and...then he shut himself off."

"He shut himself off?" Choco seemed surprised. "That's a first."

"Preston said the same thing!" I exclaimed. "But now...I'm worried I ruined everything."

"And?" Choco asked.

"And? There's no 'and' anything. That's the end of the story."

"What about the letter you got?"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter from V. I handed it to Choco for him to read.

He scanned over it quickly, quicker than I could have read it. Then he looked up at me with surprise. "What's the problem? Did you call them?"