Hey everyone, back here with the third episode of the series, Hope you all enjoy it.
And there's another thing, I'm hardly fond of defending myself but over the past few days, a few of you have assumed I'm a hacker of sorts myself! I mean that's weird, I can barely type 20 words a minute on the keyboard! But I hope you take the hacking involved in the story in the right spirit, cause it's not meant to offend anyone. And please don't send me hack requests and codes; they're plain gibberish to me!
So hoping the hacking controversy dies down, we move onwards to the third episode!
And yeah, don't forget to send me feedback!
Episode 3
"What the fuck?" Duke exclaimed at the top of his lungs to an empty room. His room was used to being quite the listener whenever he was sitting at the computer for hours at a time, and this was one of his louder outbursts of emotion.
Duke had been angry all afternoon. He'd been sad the past day; morose to the point where he's almost broken down, but the incident that occured after he'd been wasted, had knocked him out of the doldrums. And contrary to the fact that he should have felt some kind of gratefulness to his savior Scott, he felt anger, pure unadulterated antagonism towards the people who had milked him, and especially towards 'that' man.
All his sorrow had been replaced by wrath, his sadness overtaken with a feeling of revenge, for that was all the vengeful spirit had on his mind right then, revenge! He had already decided that he would channel all the rage he felt and use it to find the 'deadly duo'. He would find Scott and would have his revenge. And he had only begun the rather impossible task of finding two phantoms.
He had spent the last two hours going over every detail he could remember from their operation. The two really hadn't left that much for him to follow. But the internet was Duke's domain, and he could use it to its full potential.
And Duke had chanced upon a page that listed priceless curios around the world, and there he saw the very image of the 'watchful lady' that they had stolen, listed for an auctioning price of $456,000.
And Duke blew off his head when he saw that. He yanked the earphones out of his ears, abruptly ending his 'concert' of clanging metal music, as if it was in the way, and looked at the figure more closely. He could hardly believe his eyes.
"How can his be?" He asked loudly to the room. The room gave no answer.
Frantically Duke opened a host of other websites, pulling pages with the jade statuette in them, and with each listing his shoulders slumped a little more. The artifact was in fact priced that much. Then what had he seen before? Where was the page that Natasha had shown him?
And then it hit Duke; the trick they played on him went far deeper than he had felt at first. The price of the mission had never been fifty grand a person; it had always been a hundred and fifty grand, and he had been naïve enough to never even check up on the actual cost of the artifact. The deadly duo had probably lied to the hacker so if they got stuck with him, they could pay him just a third of his actual payment and make a dash for it. The poor broke hacker would be overwhelmed by the sum of fifty thousand anyway.
"Great." Duke stated calmly to the room as he accepted the fact with sudden tranquility that surprised him too. "Just great, I guess this is just gonna be the beginning of the surprises."
And with that Duke sighed as he resumed tapping over the keyboard, the inner vindictiveness he felt even stronger than before.
~~~
"Duke honey, how you holding up?" Damien's voice was full of concern. He had to take care of his friend during the rough time he was going through.
"I'm fine." Duke replied through the other end of the phone.
"Ok, then I'm coming over to your place. I've got us dinner, some Chinese."
"Err, actually Dame, I'm at the Archery."
Damien paused as he heard that. He took that as a good sign; a sign of recovery. Duke indulging in his pass time was a sign of him getting over the whole thing.
"But don't worry. I'm just leaving the archery right now. Just tell me where you are and I'll pick you up."
Damien wasn't too happy at that. Duke coming to pick him up meant he would have to ride pinion on his bike. And Duke wasn't too fond of pinion riders; but Damien's reluctance to ride pinion on Duke's bike was far more; the boy always drove so fast that his eyes watered and his heart jumped right into his mouth. But it would have to do for now. "Fine, I'm just at the park near my apartment."
"Great, I'll be there in 5 minutes."
Damien sighed as the call disconnected. It would take a good 10 to 15 minute drive to reach the Archery from his place. But that was only for mere mortals.
Exactly 6 minutes later Damien heard the droning of an engine as the metallic blue BMW skidded across the corner and screeched to a halt next to where Damien had taken a seat on a bench along the street.
Damien sighed once again as he gave a helpless smile to the biker in who removed his helmet and grinned at him.
"I hope the food's not gotten cold, you waiting here long Dame?"
"Not long enough." Damien stated before he made his way to the kerb and saddled the bike, positioning himself behind Duke.
A few minutes later Damien was cursing himself as to why he had not simply taken a cab or something. The 152 bhp engine roared as his eyelashes were moist with the water around eyes, instigated by the strong winds gushing at his face. His heart was beating fast and he closed his eyes each time Duke hit the brakes. His hair was obviously a mess. 'Why do I have to get stuck with this speed demon?' he asked himself.
They finally made it to Duke's apartment, Damein checked to find himself in one piece..
Damien waited till Duke got off the bike and flailed his arms around, stating melodramatically, "And great Lord, I thank thee I'm still alive after that ride!"
"Yeah yeah. We know."
"Seriously darling, we oughta go back to that park. I think I left my stomach back there."
Duke shrugged him off and started closing the garage door, Damien hastily making his way out lest he be shut inside.
"His name's Christian."
"Who?" Damien questioned at the sudden utterance from his friend.
"The guy who screwed me over, his name's not Scott, its Christian; Christian Steel."
Damien looked apprehensively at his friend as they entered the apartment.
"Honey, you still thinking about that bloke? Forget that meat-pack darling. Men who look like that always have something up their sleeves."
"Nah! Not gonna forget him, Damien snorted. "In fact I'm gonna catch up to him."
"What?" Damien exclaimed his voice getting shrill. "You're not thinking of doing anything stupid are you pumpkin?"
Duke led Damien straight into his room, where his computer monitor was still on, and Damien first squinted his eyes to make out the screen clearly and groaned when he saw the wallpaper. It was a photo of Scott, or Christian as he'd better come to know him now. Only he was wearing a blue skin tight spandex suit and had his arms stretched horizontally out. Clearly he was on a gymnast's mat.
"Don't tell me you're gonna obsess over him darling."
"Sit down Damien, take out the food and I'll tell you a thing or two."
Damien scowled as he opened the packets and took out the cardboard boxes, withdrawing the chopsticks and handing over Duke his share. He had a good mind to tell his friend to just drop the whole issue with this Christian/Scott guy but he knew better than to argue with Duke when he had his mind made up.
"You know, I told you that those two cheated me off fifty grand?"
Damien uh-huh'd in response.
"Well that wasn't true. They actually milked me off a hundred and fifty grand!"
Damien gasped in response.
"Yup," Duke stated nodding his head, "that's what the job was worth."
