End Transmission

Suggested Listening: Tears in Vegas by Cinema Bizarre

Chapter Fifteen: Theory

Tires screeched as he slowed to a sudden stop in the parking lot of some no name gas station near the base. He might as well enjoy his ride home, as he was still in a good mood, so he knew he should get the shopping done before something turned his mood sour.

He sighed, not really wanting to go, but knew it was a good excuse to get his drinks. His boots clunked on the ground as he walked lazily to the entrance and rolled his eyes at the annoying chime that echoed as he stepped inside. The cashier eyed him wearily but Matt paid her no mind.

He made his way to the non food section to see if they had any detergent; all they needed was something to last until he actually went shopping. Whenever that might be...

He found a random brand, and after making sure it was the hypoallergenic kind, took it with him as he meandered into the back where the cold drinks were. He grinned and grabbed a pack of energy drinks, a brand he always wanted to try but had always been too hooked on his other ones to do so before.

He also grabbed another non-refrigerated pack and headed up to the front. He passed through the snack aisle, a rather small aisle compared to the other ones, which in his mind didn't quite make sense, and grabbed things randomly off the shelf. Dinner was served.

He dumped the items onto the counter and didn't even blink at the price that came up. He paid using credit, knowing damn well none of the money was his so he didn't care how much was spent, and waited for the woman to bag his things.

With that hassle out of the way he tossed the bags into the backseat, save for the four-pack of cold drinks, and hit the roads again. He popped the tab and took a large swig of the energy drink and blinked at the slight fruity flavor. It didn't taste bad but it would take some getting used to. Whatever, a drink was a drink.

He stepped on the gas, cranked up the music and lit a cigarette. Too bad the drive wouldn't be long, with how fast he was going, he was actually enjoying himself. That though, should have been a warning that something would off set the mood.

Matt made it into the apartment with little trouble, other than almost setting the security off... and deposited his drinks into the farthest corner of the stand up cabinet, the spot Mello never usually looked as his chocolate was never placed there, and put the rest of the stuff on the table.

He remembered that he needed to get his laundry out, so after he'd kicked his boots off into a corner he padded over to the laundry room. His clothes were mostly dry, the ones not quite being done were his jeans as the sheets had sucked all the warmth from everything else, and he had almost made it out of the room when Near appeared in front of him.

The albino appeared slightly uncomfortable and Matt knew he was not going to like the upcoming conversation, no matter the subject. "Matt has been acting strangely since he got back from the meeting..." Near trailed off, fingers pulling gently on a curl of soft white hair, his large eyes fixated on Matt. Matt couldn't decide if the picture was cute or really fucking creepy.

Whatever he decided on, he was unprepared for Near's next statement.

"Matt was using his body for informational gains."

Matt stared at Near for a moment, heat radiating from his face, as he tried to formulate a response. He decided on something not quite as serious as it probably should have been. But Near had brought it up so it was his own fault.

"No, 'Matt' was using his body for sexual gratification." Near didn't quite appear to believe him so he continued. "I got the information for free. It was my own stupidity that lead us to having sex. I started it." he finished softly with a lopsided grin.

Near seemed to puzzle over his words for a moment before hesitantly nodding. "Then I apologize for assuming in correctly."

"Don't worry about it Near, it looked pretty suspicious, even I know that. At least you paid attention. If it weren't for the fucking mark on my neck Mello wouldn't have even noticed." Matt gave Near a shrug and continued on out of the room.

Well that had been awkward, Matt thought to himself.

Really fucking awkward.

He really hadn't wanted either of them to know anything about the incident, or should he say incident number two?, but it was his own fault. He wouldn't dwell on it any further, unless Mello felt up to interrogating him too.

Oh God he hoped not...

Though at least Near hadn't pressed him for details, or anything else on the matter. Near was only worried, and Matt could understand that. Near took the facts he had on hand and formulated a conclusion, a puzzle with pieces missing.

And as Matt looked back on the last day and a half he winced. He looked really fucking suspicious... if Near had come to that conclusion, what one had Mello come to? Or perhaps... he didn't want to know.

It was late, Matt registered, as he found himself back in the kitchen. Late enough where he was hungry. And though he knew he should eat more than potato chips and packaged donuts with a side of cigarettes and energy drinks but... he was simply too lazy.

That, and Mello wasn't there to stop him. Old habits die hard, without motivation, as it were.

He grinned despite the slightly morose thought, and stuffed a chocolate covered donut in his mouth. It was almost too sugary, and there were two more of the kind in the box of twelve, but it was edible.

He almost thought about saving the others for Mello, but they would have probably gone bad by the time he got back. Probably would have grown mold on them by then too. Looking all green with white fuzz...

Matt shook his head. His thoughts were straying into very weird areas...

He stuffed the remainder of the donut into his mouth and grabbed his junk food and moved into the main room where he proceeded to sit on the couch and lazily flip through the television channels until he landed on some music station, simply so there would be background noise other than whatever crappy sitcom was playing, before going to the guide.

Near joined him a few minutes later, sitting on the floor by his feet; Matt almost likened it to a how a dog or perhaps a cat, with how social Near could be, would sit with their owners. Matt shook his head of the thought and finally chose some animated movie called 'Perfect Blue'.

It was subtitled in English with the spoken language being Japanese. The basic plotline was that some chick went crazy when a pop idol turned actress; and then some guy began to stalk the actress and they both tried to kill her. Or at least that was what he had gotten out of it. The movie had been confusing...

Matt had eaten his way through six donuts and a bag of chips in that time as well as consumed two of his energy drinks, he did have to ration himself until he went normal shopping. What he really wanted was coffee... but it was always easier to simply pop a tab then to get off his lazy ass and wait for the coffee to brew and to fix it to his desired state.

And Matt liked being lazy unless he had to be otherwise.

He tore open a bag of some sort of pretzel mix, with God knew what else thrown in with the salty stix, and held it in front of Near and was surprised by the pale hand that actually reached inside to grab a handful. He hadn't expected the albino to actually eat something and couldn't help the grin that stretched his lips thin.

"How is it?" he asked, not even knowing what flavor he had gotten.

"Salty and a little bitter but edible..." Near replied as he softly nibbled on a pretzel. Matt shook his head.

"Perhaps there is hope for you yet." he thought Near might have sighed softly but he could have imagined it. He still held his grin even as the end credits rolled to a stop and it previewed some stupid movie as the next one up.

He moved back to the guide and promptly found another movie, he supposed somewhere in either horror or action category going by the description and leaned back further to watch it. It was in Russian with no subtitles but he wasn't bothered by it.

He ended up handing Near the mixed bag of pretzels and lit a cigarette. The movie was actually kind of awesome with the plot line, and of course the exploding body parts and what not.

The night was calm, and almost perfect in a way. Matt wished that Mello were there, doing absolutely nothing with them, instead of risking his life to lead his Mafiya... but he knew all to well that wishing got you nowhere fast.

He vaguely heard his computer beep, only once so it might have been an e-mail or pop-up, but ignored it as the movie had just gotten even more interesting. Had it been an emergency the laptop would have done more than just beep.

He finished off the donuts and the last energy drink, almost groaning at the too full feeling, and only stayed at the couch long enough to finish the movie before he moved over to the laptop. He knew that he would just continue to eat if he watched something and his poor stomach simply couldn't handle that at the moment.

He switched the laptop out of its half hibernation mode and noted the e-mail alert that had frozen to the side of the screen. He rolled is eyes and fixed the problem before opening said e-mail.

He stilled at the name in the inbox. One new e-mail, Sender: Unknown

He hesitated for a moment before he clicked the delete button. There would be no more contact between them. At all. No matter what information Jack might have. It would simply not be a good idea... for either of them.

And though he hadn't shown any outward reactions, he knew that Near had noticed something was off. It couldn't be helped, it was just how Near was. He was glad he wasn't hungry anymore because just the sight of the e-mail had been enough to kill his appetite. He really shouldn't have agreed to meet with him after the first time.

Matt sighed softly. It could have been worse, he reminded himself. It could have been much worse. He was lucky that Jack wasn't the type to truly press for something more. Or the type to demand payment for the information.

He was lucky Jack considered him a friend or sorts.

Not many could say that about their contacts. Though Matt supposed he couldn't say it anymore either.

There were no more e-mails in his inbox so he closed out of it and opened the game he had been playing before Mello's call. Exploding zombies always put a smile to his face. And though he was enjoying himself, Matt had to concede to the fact that he was tired. He supposed unreasonably so after the four cans of energy drink he had consumed, but tired none-the-less.

He exited the game and made sure the sound on his laptop was up all the way as he carted it to his room after a soft goodnight to the albino who still sat, playing, in front of the television. He stripped and fell into bed after the lights were out. He sighed, inhaling the soft, clean scent of his sheets and closed his eyes.

.

Beeping was what woke him.

A loud beeping.

Matt hadn't set his alarm the night before, he rarely set it at all, so his sleep-tired mind struggled to find the cause as he sat up in bed. He yawned, rubbed at his eyes and suddenly looked in the direction of the laptop. It was out of its mini-hibernation with a 'warning' alert plastered across the screen.

Just another n00b attempting to hack Mello's system then. He sighed. Good morning Yekaterinburg...

He left the comfort of his bed and snatched the laptop and brought it back with him as he sat cross-legged on the crumpled blankets. The warning flickered on and off with the beeping and he wanted to snuff out the hackers life simply to get that annoying sound out of his mind.

Matt checked the clock and frowned. For fucks sake it was only five in the morning; it was too early for that shit. He was going to murder them.

They were going to cry after what he would do to them.

He set his sights on the hacker and instead of simply booting them from the system and essentially locking them out, he followed the trail back to the host computer. He grinned as he planted a virus in the system that would activate in exactly forty seconds. And when it activated it would wipe out everything they guy had.

It would make the blue screen of death look like a walk in the park on a warm sunny day.

Matt quickly checked what the hacker was attempting to get into, fifteen seconds, before he carefully shoved them out of Mello's system and locked them out with the firewalls from his laptop rather than Mello's custom ones.

Sorry Mello, he amended silently, but yours just don't cut it. Not even close.

He grinned widely as the countdown hit zero. He placed the laptop on the nightstand as he yanked on a pair of jeans. The virus should be infecting the host computer, corrupting and deleting all data, before it did a system shut down where it would eat away at everything. The beauty of it was that it would simply look like a forced shutdown and nothing more.

When the idiot turned the computer back on everything would look normal until they went to use the Internet, where the connection would have been severed and cut off, or checked their saved documents, which would no longer be there. Or looked in any of the main drives which would have been wiped clean.

Well that and it would leave the laptop virtually dead and unable to support hardly anything anymore, meaning that even should you try to fix it, it was doomed for failure. The CD Rom drive would be fried, so no way to use restorative disks, and with so little memory it wouldn't have held any of the backed up data, I they had any.

That hacker would regret the moment he even thought about breaking into Mello's systems. It was just bad luck that he had woken Matt up. He treasured what sleep he got so it was never appreciated when something, other than himself, woke him up.

Though something about the hack had struck him as odd, now that he thought about it. He pulled on a shirt and shook his hair out. The hacker had been attempting to gain access to a fairly normal, even by his standards, part of Mello's system rather than the largely restricted parts that others usually went for.

He yawned and wondered what they had been looking for, or if they had simply been in the wrong area. Matt decided he really didn't care. He was simply too tired.

Matt shuffled over to the kitchen where he started a pot of coffee. After it was set and started he pulled out an energy drink and chugged down half of it. He was not going to wait on the damn coffee. But he would have both.

He checked the cabinet for something to eat and found he didn't like the choices. Matt decided that he would order the groceries online after he got his coffee. He would have to pay extra, well someone would, but it meant everything would be ready for when he went to pick it up. That way he could go get the groceries without the actual shopping portion of the ordeal. He only did that sometimes as he couldn't always figure out what he wanted, or what they needed, until he saw it in the store.

But for today, at the very least, it suited his mood. He would probably end up lounging on the couch afterwards until he had to pick up the stuff. Perhaps even get some of his missing sleep back...

The coffee maker beeped and Matt drank down the remainder of the can, dropping it into the waste basket, as he procured a mug to drink out of. He didn't bother with sugar at the moment and simply poured crème into it until it was drinkable. He downed the cup and filled another with only a little crème and added sugar as well. He took that cup with him into the main room and left it on the table by the couch as he retrieved his laptop.

With everything he needed, minus the actual coffee pot, he opened up the stores site and began clicking on the items he wanted though he knew there would always be something he had forgotten. Drinking what few sips of the hot brewed liquid he could, without burning his mouth, he paid with a credit card and set the laptop on the floor.

Matt turned the television on and set it to a random music channel, one of the ones that were programmed that he could sleep to, from what he heard it was probably the rock station.

At least that way by the time Near got up, whenever that was, the extra noise wouldn't bother him in the least. He stared lazily at the screen for a while, the white block lettering floating around the black background, before he rolled over to face the couch.

.

Matt let out a large yawn and sat up, stretching. He spied Near seated on the floor a few feet away, a few decks of cards being set up into a card house quietly. "Good afternoon Matt." the small albino stated.

Matt shook his head with a smile and readjusted his goggles which had been knocked askew during sleep. He probably had lines on his face from where they had dug in, but he didn't mind too much. It couldn't be helped by then anyway.

As his mind was cleared of the fog of sleep it finally clicked that Near had said 'good afternoon' rather than good morning. He looked at the clock on the far side of the wall in surprise as it state three-thirty pm. He had slept for over eight hours on the couch. "Damn." he muttered and rubbed a hand over his face.

He had slept for far too long but he supposed it couldn't be helped, the time was already lost and he knew that had there have been a problem Near would have woken him immediately. As it was he should have left to pickup the groceries already as that particular store liked to close early on certain days of the week.

He staggered from the couch and shoved his boots on while he grabbed his keys and vest. "I'm picking up the groceries I ordered earlier, do you want anything Near?" he yelled across the room. He noticed Near's hand hesitate over a card for a moment.

"If Matt obtains something to eat while out would he perhaps bring something back as well?" Matt blinked at Near before he smirked. Near didn't usually want anything but he did have a craving for take-out every once and a while.

"Sure Near, any preferences?" he questioned but Near merely stayed silent and Matt knew the albino didn't care what was gotten so long as it was take-out. He was fine with that, he hadn't really felt like making something anyway. Perhaps he could find a pizza place of some kind?

He couldn't remember if there were any good places over by the grocers or not.

He started the engine the second he was in the car and didn't bother to strap in, he never did. It wasn't a long drive to the store, a mere twenty minutes as he didn't want it too close to the apartment, and it only took five minutes to pack up all the bags into the Camaro, filling the back and even the floor in the front.

There was stuff that would have melted, and or thawed out, had it been warm out, but it was in the depths of winter and frigidly cold out so Matt wasn't worried. He realized he probably should have brought his laptop with him, as he could have checked what stores were in the area, but hindsight was a wonderful thing, wasn't it?

Matt just hoped that it wasn't going to take a long time, he was kind of hungry...

But as he left the grocers and glanced around him, at the open places of business, he had no idea what he was looking for.

Great, just great.

-End Theory-