Patterns - An Academy Story

The Stig, Part II. Man, can she drive...

Victor's POV

I couldn't say I was really looking forward to re-qualifying in pursuit and evasion tactics, but Mr. B said that Gabe and I were due. Driving was ok. I love my BMW, and it's a great car to drive, but I sit behind a desk most of the time in an office or behind the controls at the recording studio. How are high speed driving skills supposed to help me with electronic surveillance or hacking a system? Or music composition, I thought to myself. I pulled up to Gabe's building and buzzed him on his phone to let him know I was here.

A minute later the front door to his building opened and he walked out. Man, he has style, I thought as I watched him walk towards the car. None of that hipster, bow tie and flannel for him. Edgy, skinny black jeans, lime green shirt, orange scarf around his neck, black ankle boots, black pea coat, and Ray Bans. Not anything I'd ever be comfortable wearing, but it looked right on him.

"Hey man, how's it going?" I asked him as he climbed in to the passenger side of the car.

"Life doesn't fucking suck right now," he responded as he buckled his seat belt. "The gallery space is coming along. So far I haven't killed any of the assholes who are doing the renovation, but it's been close. That fucking contractor thinks he knows what will work in the space better than I do. They just started, so I'm going to have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't try and change anything while I'm not around."

Gabe grumbled on for a minute.

"You should have talked to North and Silas about renovating the space for you."

"Are you fucking kidding me, Vic?" he exclaimed. "I would definitely have killed them by the time the project was done. I don't know how you didn't kill North when he was renovating that townhouse for your studio."

"Yeah, you might be right. That wasn't the easiest renovation to go through. He did a great job on the carriage house, though. They're working on that renovation for the Anderson's this week anyway, so you would have had to wait for them to finish that job."

"I've got a really cool idea for the back patio area of the gallery," he went on. "I want to turn it into an interactive art space where you can paint pictures and graffiti, and shit."

I could tell he was really excited about these plans. "Sounds like it would be fun," I replied.

"It isn't a historic building, and so zoning shouldn't be a problem." He went on, "I've put in approval to open a gallery café, too, something that Luke can help me with." I listened to his plans as he described them, and I was excited for him.

We discussed a couple of our ongoing missions and the recording studio for the rest of the drive to the track. I heard that the Academy recently re-did the course, and I was curious to see what they did to change it. It shouldn't be boring, at least.

As we pulled up to the track complex entrance, I couldn't help but wonder if we were in the right place. Everything was different. It was huge now. The Academy must have bought a lot of empty scrub land around the previous track to expand.

"Gabe, what did the directions say about where we go first? This place looks completely different."

I stopped the car and looked over as Gabe pulled up the text on his phone. "It says to go to section G for the slalom course first." He pointed to a location on the map attached to the text. "There, we head that way."

I pulled the car out in the direction Gabe pointed.

"This place has seriously changed," I remarked to Gabe. "It looks like we're heading to that race course place at Disney World."