Takeover || (Completed)

The Wait

In front of Luke were two vials sitting on a rotting mahogany table. Both contained a viscous green liquid. The figure standing behind them, a wrinkled old man in robes, had instructed him to drink one. Despite the fact that Luke had no idea where he was, he didn't feel uncomfortable. The room was dimly lit, the only source of light coming out of fire-lit torches in the wall. The floor was covered in a green, slippery moss that was just a few inches deep and was enough to cover the bottoms of the table where the table legs were. The ceiling and walls were covered in mosaics that didn't look awfully dissimilar from Roman mosaics. There were some etchings in the walls at periodic points which depicted Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Luke suddenly wished he had a photographic memory so that he could translate what the hieroglyphs said. The man interrupted his thoughts before he was able to memorize the hieroglyphs. Oh well, thought Luke, it's probably something useless.

"One contains poison," he said in a robotic voice as he pointed to the two vials, "and the other contains power. Pick one."

Luke looked at anything that might help him in choosing which vial to drink. The hieroglyph might help, thought Luke, but I don't speak hieroglyph so goddamnit. Eventually, after a few minutes of discussion in his head, Luke decided to randomly pick one and chose the one to his left.

"Good choice," said the man, still speaking in his robotic voice but he now sounded like he was mocking him. Luke drank the vial in one go, as there was no point in drinking it slowly. The contents of the vial were lukewarm and not very viscous. However, that didn't matter. Immediately his abdomen burned. Luke screamed in pain. Damnit, he thought, I took the poison. His trachea burned as the acid dissolved his flesh and worked its way through his body - starting at his trachea and ending at his pancreas. He could feel himself losing his grip on his consciousness and was about to faint. Luke woke up, sweat all over him and his bed. He was breathing heavily and his bedsheets were wet with sweat. He rubbed his eyes. His hands felt like they were covered in glue. At least it was just a dream, thought Luke, relieved. He got out of bed, went to the kitchen and got a glass of water to soothe his pain. He didn't want to wake up Daniel and so left the light turned off. He could see that Daniel's laptop was still on, it's 400 nit display illuminating the bunks and Luke was surprised that he hadn't noticed it as soon as he had gotten up. What harm could it do, thought Luke, if I looked at his drive? Luke had always dreamed of looking at the files on Dan's laptop ever since he had changed from his construction job to that of a literal private army that broke the law. A lot. But, before tonight, Daniel had always turned off his laptop after use, kept it secure - changing his password every few days - and made sure no-one ever looked over his shoulder while he was on it. Which meant two things: either he was off his head on drugs or alcohol, or he wanted Luke to see it. Considering how Daniel had behaved the past few weeks, Luke determined it to be the first. Luke sat down on a chair as silently as he could, although he could do nothing to stop the audible screech that occurred when he did. He stood still. Daniel turned in his bed and for a moment Luke thought he was screwed. Fortunately, Daniel was just turning in his sleep and Luke could resume his task. Because Daniel had left his tabs open, Luke didn't have to do anything more than look through them. The one that was currently open was a drafted email to an Edward Nigma, which read:

Edward,

I know you hate me since I kicked you off the force, but I've had a change of heart. I think we should meet up in Portugal and talk. Email me back if you're interested.

Daniel

What? Thought Luke, what the hell is he doing? It made no sense to Luke. While on the run from the police, Daniel was going to send an email that could be easily traced by the feds and capture him. Either he was downright stupid, or he was planning something. Once again, Luke thought the former was more plausible. Luke had always considered Daniel to be like a real-life ninja, jumping about and stealth and whatnot. Luke looked at the received emails that had come from other people and also the ones he had sent. They were nothing but red herrings, probably there to distract the feds. Some of them were clearly indicating that they were nothing but red herrings, like one titled 'Come and get the coke in Chinatown'. Then Luke realised. The email is a red herring! He was planning something. The tab to the right of the Gmail tab was a document that appeared to be written by Daniel himself and read: