128 (Operation Armageddon: Book 1)

Chapter Twenty: The Plan | Part 1

The late morning sun shone right through the thin apartment windows. The beaming rays of the sun fell right on Matthew, who was facing the window. As a result, he awoke instantly, squinting to protect his eyes from the light emitted by the glaring sun.

He turned over to the other side to keep his face in the shade and also to check on Daniel. He turned out to still be sleeping soundly, his snores blatant. Matthew smiled before slipping himself out of bed to wake Daniel.

"Dan, it's time to get up," Matthew whispered, waking him slowly. His eyes fluttered open as he got a glimpse of Matthew standing right before him. Instead of getting up slowly, however, he pranced up in fright, scaring Matthew too.

"Sorry," he apologised as he realised it was just his friend. "The sudden appearance of someone standing before me kind of freaked me out."

Matthew walked towards the bathroom to freshen up a little. He began rubbing some face cream to clean out his face. As he was washing up, he could hear someone knocking loudly on the door.

He dried his cheeks with a towel before hanging it on a metal beam and walking out of the bathroom. Daniel was already stepping towards the door, so Matthew stood by and watched him open the door, waiting to see who would appear.

The door swung open to reveal a familiar face. "Morning, boys," Megan greeted as she appeared with a bag of food. "Applebee's for brunch, anyone?"

She then entered the apartment unit, which looked almost untouched to her. She inspected the room, finding that the furnishing was nothing similar to that of her room. "Wow, there seem to be a lot more things in your unit than mine," she commented as she rubbed her fingers across the dusty tabletops.

Megan then laid the food on the dining table, unboxed the packaging and took out the disposable cutlery. Daniel poured some glasses they had with water and placed them evenly across the table, one for each of them.

Meanwhile, Matthew grabbed his laptop and a flash drive out of his suitcase before putting both items at the end of the dining table. His actions, however, were confusing to the other two.

"Uh, what are you going to do with those things?" Daniel questioned as he watched Matthew power on his laptop.

Matthew then brought the flash drive up, moving their attention to it instead of the laptop. He held it up to them so they would recognise what it was. "You both didn't forget about this, did you?" he questioned, although he knew they hadn't.

He then plugged it into the laptop, in which the files in the flash drive immediately showed up on the screen. He clicked on a folder titled "Davis", which was an obvious reference to him. The detectives observed him as he clicked on the file, assuming he knew what he was doing. However, Matthew himself hadn't gotten the opportunity to even check the files present in the flash drive and was equally anxious to see its contents.

Unfortunately, the file appeared empty.

"No," he mumbled as he shook his head in disbelief. "It can't be that there's nothing in this file."

The other two didn't comment further on it, however. They continued watching him as he tried different ways to see if there were other files present in the flash drive. However, he didn't seem to be getting anywhere with fruitless findings.

Matthew tried searching the flash drive multiple times, removing and reinserting it over and over again and unhiding hidden files, although none of them seemed to work. After many failed attempts, he decided to accept the fact that there probably wasn't any content in the file at all.

"Damn it," he cursed as he unplugged the USB and threw it into the corner of the room. As a result of the impact, the flash drive broke, its pieces dismantling from the force. He slammed the laptop lid forcefully, his face planted right onto the table in dismay.