Bone Diggers - Chapter Eighteen

00100011 01000001 01100011 01100101 01000100 01100001 01111001 (Originally Posted on Ace Day!)

Loading... Chapter Eighteen

"What do you mean, it glitched?"

Owen glanced around the room that was decked out in pastel purple. What was once Emily's living room was now baby shower central. Katherine, one of Em's friends, had brought cookies cut in the shape of bottles and baby strollers. The frosting colors ranging from soft green to rubber duck yellow.

Maybe the setting is what made talking about this so hard. These were what Owen dubbed Emily's 'I'm a real adult' friends. Most were married and/or had kids of their own, a rare few were simply co-workers. Which left Owen and Neal as the only friends left over from before she was married. They were tucked by the food table, where bachelors not comfortable with babies always ended up.

"Well?" Neal asked. "Are you going to finish your story, or just stare at the finger sandwiches?"

Owen sighed. "When Lance was missing, I went to ask for help from Amilia. The game showed a flashback, and the headgear fucked up the colors. Blue looked gray, then when we got closer, my camera ripped away from me."

"You stopped seeing color when Lance was in trouble?" Neal asked.

"Well..." Owen had explained this twice already. His eyes narrowed slightly wondering if he was the one missing something instead of Neal. "Only blue."

Neal smirked to himself.

"What?"

"That sounds so romantic." Neal picked up a cupcake that was made to look like a rattle. He pulled out the stick that was tipped with a lifesaver. "You know, the colors leaving your life when someone you care about goes?"

Owen groaned loud enough that the whole room probably heard it. "That's too much. It's going to make me sick like the guess what smeared chocolate bar made the fake poopy diaper game. I'm never eating chocolate, or talking to you, again."

Neal laughed, but Owen broke off away from him instead of hearing any more. He was surrounded by other ladies, but ignored them to favor the arm of Em's recliner.

When the group discussions broke into side conversations, Emily looked up at Owen. "Was Neal picking on you?" Her smile lit up her otherwise tired expression.

"He's the worst," Owen said, without much feeling.

Emily patted his leg. "There, there."

Owen watched as Neal tried to flirt with a girl who had ventured over for a drink. It was a mockery, fit for a middle schooler. "I'm not sure why you even put up with him."

"Same reason I put up with you."

He looked back, gauging her comment before grinning. "Because, I'm so charming?"

"Bingo."

"Oh!" Katherine yelled from the small group sitting in on the couch. "We should start bingo."

Owen rolled his eyes, but no one seemed to notice.

"Alright, sounds fun," Emily said, before she glanced back up at Owen. "You should have invited Andreah. It could have been your baby shower gift to me."

"Oh yeah, this is something I wanted to invite her to." He glanced around the room. Within three seconds, he spotted the word baby four times. "It's totally her scene and everything."

Emily pursed her lips and shot him a look before she tried to get up. The simple task was getting harder and harder, now that it looked like she swallowed a watermelon.

"Help me up?"

Owen got up and offered his hand.

"Thanks," she smiled.

He mirrored the sweetness found there for a second before it faded. "I'm sorry Rick couldn't be here." His voice was a near whisper, and if they had stepped back, she wouldn't have heard.

Emily looked down for a second, before lifting her chin. "It's okay. It's what I signed up for, and he'll be home in a few months," she said. "Now if you excuse me, I have to go win bingo. The prize is extra shares in our office lotto."

"Maybe they will give you two cards, since you're playing for two."

"Oooh," Emily said, as she lingered between Owen and the group that gathered to play. "I should see if they would go for that."

Owen messed around on his phone as they played baby bingo. It was an odd sort of game. Instead of numbers, you marked down what gifts were given to the mother-to-be as she opened up presents. Emily had given Neal and Owen each a card to play for her, since she had to actively keep the game going. Every other gift or so Owen looked up to see what was opened and the marked it down.

"Bingo!" Katherine called at the second-to-last gift.

The cry was welcome, since boredom threatened to swallow Owen whole. He waited until Emily finished opening the last gifts before he decided to head home.

"Isn't this the cutest?" Emily asked as Owen came over to say goodbye. She held up a onesie Star Trek uniform complete with fake badge. "Rick's going to love it."

Owen chuckled. "That baby is going to be the cutest little one in the Alpha Quadrant."

"Hey! You got that right."

"I'll have you know..." Owen said, very seriously. He leaned in, and glanced if the others were listening in. "...That I've been studying up so your hubby and I will have something to talk about when he gets back."

Em's smile melted into one even sweeter as she brought the baby clothes to her chest. She knew Owen wouldn't like to be called out for the gesture, so she moved on. "Are you heading out?"

"Yeah, was planning on it." Owen bent down so he could give her a hug without making her get up again. He waved a goodbye to Neal, who nodded, as he was being talked up by one of the girls.

It was a bit of a walk back to his place, but Owen was in no hurry. About ten minutes in he decided to give Andreah a call. It rang for a while. He started to doubt she'd pick up.

"Hello?" Andreah said.

"Hey, beautiful." Owen thought he could hear her roll her eyes over the phone.

"You know you remind me of an old man when you actually call me, right?"

Owen scoffed, making a lady with a poodle look up at him as she sat outside on a bench. He didn't say anything, but turned his head enough so she could see the phone and connect the dots. "Maybe, I was worried about street harassment and wanted an excuse for strangers not to talk to me?"

"Does that actually happen to you?" Andreah laughed.

"No, I'm a guy, of course it doesn't."

Andreah laughed louder this time, less reserved since he had already made her grin once. "So, what are you doing?"

"Walking home from Em's." Owen was forced to stop at an intersection. The temptation to jaywalk was strong, but the half-second of thinking cost him the window of opportunity.

"Aww, I want to meet your friends."

"Really?" His head jerked with the surprise. He had only briefly met her friends, and meeting his felt like a step she wasn't into. "Well, it was a baby shower so..."

"Oh."

He would have shaken his head if he didn't want to book it across the crosswalk. This route was one he took fairly often, and if he moved fast enough there'd be no worry about catching the other lights. "So, what are you doing?"

"Just relaxing in bed, watching some TV."

"Yeah? What are you wearing?" The comment caught the attention of someone Owen was walking with. Their eyes went wide, and turned their head as if to gesture to one of their friends that this was actually happening.

Andreah took a few seconds too, likely deciding how she wanted to play this. "Well, I have thigh high boots and a fuzzy cat suit—"

"Stop. I'm sorry, stop," he said, now talking over her with a laugh. "I have to remember not to play chicken with you in public."

"Or ever. That was the shortest yet, I must be getting good. I was going to go with the skin of my enemies, but it seemed a bit...Hmm, I dunno, much?"

"You should have gone with a onesie," Owen suggested, if anyone was still listening they were lost now. "You know, because it would have been a throwback to the baby shower?"

"Oh, that would have been clever. I won all the same, though."

"You aren't even here, and you're trying to embarrass me."

"You get so cute when you are embarrassed, though. You just stare off like you can't believe this is happening, and the tips of your ears get all red," Andreah said with a renewed excitement.

"You need to stop." But she didn't. Owen had to avoid a car that decided to make an illegal turn into the crosswalk right that second. He might have flipped them off if Andreah wasn't more pressing. "I swear to god, I'm going to hang up if you continue."

Andreah chuckled. "Goodnight, Owen."

"Goodnight, brat."

When Owen got home, he should have cleaned up around his apartment, or tried to get a reasonable amount of sleep for once. Instead, he had a job to do, even if this one only paid in personal gratification. He told Lance he'd find the man who'd hurt him, and by god he would.

He dropped down into his computer chair and grabbed a pad of paper. Owen wrote down everything he currently knew. The character name of Marc Bello, the in-game time of death, and the city it happened in. From there Owen spent an hour or more scrolling through obituaries listed on the game's forums. These official lists were mostly ignored. A list of dead characters was about as interesting as a press release. Occasionally, a big name player died unexpectedly, and reporters could scoop the story this way.

For a bone digger, these ashes were a gold mine. If a player was trying to hide their username this is how they found it. It was paired along with time of death and location so that the system was able to keep the player's login, friends list, and cash items.

"Got you," Owen grinned. He highlighted the username of MarkLark. There was plenty of steps before he had a real name, but this was a start. The loose thread needed to find the man behind the torturer.

***

Frank's coffee barely touched his desk before one of his workers stormed into his office. "Owen?" he asked, blinking in surprise. He had barely gotten here himself. Half the lights were still off. "What are you doing here so early?"

"I have a story for you," Owen said. A manila folder was tucked against his chest as if it protected him against the morning cold. With quick steps, he dropped it on Frank's desk. Instead of flipping through the folder, Frank keep an eye on Owen as he spoke. "In game, I found a man that was torturing people. If the guy had just been an NPC, or a just an average person, we'd label them as an asshole, and that would be it. But this guy is a doctor. General practitioner Mark Byers."

Frank's lips parted as his head started to swirl with ideas of where this story could go, but he'd been in this business too long to get excited about possible headlines. "We can't just slam this guy for his choices. It will seem petty, and if we aren't careful, it will be downright libel."

"We don't have to actually accuse him or anything. Just state the facts of what he did and ask, just ask, a single question. Is it ethical for a doctor to play a torturer?" Owen pressed his hands together, it was all he could do to keep from pacing around Frank's office. The lack of sleep the night before meant he was running on momentum.

"How did you find this story?" Frank asked. He started to flip through the papers that proved the connection from Age of Shadows to a professional LinkedIn account. The doctor had made one mistake; he used the same username for multiple accounts.

"I, uh," Owen stammered. He never wanted this to be about him, but if the story couldn't be proven, Frank would instantly drop it. "It happened on a mission I was on."

Frank nodded, and looked through more of the papers that were on the doctor's practice. He lifted a skeptical eye back to Owen, who started nervously chewing on his lip. "Did you find this all legally?"

"Absolutely."

A grin crept across Frank's face as he slowly let himself buy into this story. It would make a killer editorial. "Write me up something and we'll run it in tomorrow's issue."

Owen felt breathless, and wanted to dart out of the room to get working on it. If he rode the high of a yes, he'd definitely be able to write up a draft before fatigue hit him.

"Do you want the byline?" Frank asked.

"All yours, boss."

"God, I should pay you more."

Owen chuckled. He didn't care about his name, or to personally gain from this. All he wanted was for that doctor to have real world consequences for the horrible things he did. The world would decide what they wanted to do with him after that. While more money was always nice, he just wanted to thank Frank for running the story. Instead, not wanting to look too eager, he bargained.

"The coffee in this building is awful," Owen said, "I'd call it even if you brought me the good stuff tomorrow."