The Net: Still Running: Chapter 2

In the morning, Angela pulled out Walter's business card, and called his number from the hotel room. He gave her directions to a music store and told her to meet him there in half an hour. Angela quickly changed into some fresh clothes and paid for the room. She then threw her bag into her car and went to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts, buying one old fashioned donut and a small coffee, black, which was all she could afford.

She finished the donut and half of her coffee on her way to meet her new boss, pulling up to the music store at the same time he was getting out of his own car.

"Nice timing!" he said when he saw her.

"Thanks. So, what are we doing here at a music store? I thought we were FBI."

"Well, almost FBI for you. You still have to go through eight weeks worth of training." Walter opened the door and they went inside. Upon entering the store, Angela noticed that every classical CD that ever existed lined the walls. No other music could be seen, no pop, country, rock, or rap. "OK, well, this is our office."

"What? A music store? Are you kidding?"

"Nope. The store is just the front. Back here," Walter lead her to another room through a curtain. "This is the official office."

Several desks lined the back wall, each with a computer on it. But the computers had not been put together yet. Cords lay everywhere, monitors lay on shelves, separate from everything else, along with several printers. Boxes littered the floor along with bubble wrap and lots of plastic.

"I'm sorry," Walter apologized. "I know nothing about putting these things together. I tried. Honest. It just wasn't working out."

Angela sighed, a slight smile on her face. "Well, be glad you hired me then."

She grabbed a monitor from the shelf and set it down on a desk. Looking around the room she grabbed several cords and hooked them into the computer, linking the monitor to it, and plugging it in.

"Software?" she asked.

Walter handed her a bunch of CD-ROMs, and she inserted the first one into the computer after turning it on and waiting for it to boot up. While the programs installed, she grabbed more monitors, printers, cords, set them together on desks, and continued to hook things together. Walter could only stand there and watch her.


"OK, Walter, test run of this computer," Angela said, sitting in front of one they'd set up to be a locator, able to find the last place someone had been.

"Alright, let's see what it can do."

Angela typed in the nine digit number she knew to be Jacob's Social Security Number and they both waited to see what would come up. Angela clasped her hands in front of her, in the hopes that the computer would tell her where Jacob was.

"I'm sorry, but this Social Security Number does not exist," the computer told her.

"What?! But……but…..That's impossible!!" she checked to make sure she had typed in the correct number. She had. "But that can't be! I swear that's his number! It's got to be!"

She retyped the same number five times, and each time it came up as being non-existent. Finally, exasperated, she put in her own number. It dutifully came up with Seattle, Washington. She put Jacob's number back in. Once again, it didn't exist.

"I'm sorry Angela, but I don't think…." Walter started.

"No! This can't be happening!" Angela sprang out of her chair. "I'm going home. I'll see you tomorrow at the airport."

Walter didn't even have a chance to get a single word in before she was gone.


The next day Angela drove her old car to the airport where she met her new boss. Her eyes were slightly red rimmed but she didn't say anything to Walter. Carrying her one duffle bag, she followed him to the lounge area. Walter read the newspaper, while Angela read a novel by Dean Koontz. Though as she read, she kept looking up, distracted by something on her mind. She'd take her eyes off the book, and end up staring into space, thinking. Walter paid no attention to this at all, absorbed in the news as he was. Half an hour later, after Angela had gone back to her book several times, only to be interrupted by her thoughts each time, she was startled by the call to board the plane.

During the flight her thoughts ruled her. She found that she couldn't read or do anything else at all. Instead, she stared out the window and remembered the past. The past with Jacob. When she had first seen him, when Sorcerer had first revealed himself as Jacob Resh, he'd been too young, in her mind, to be doing what he was doing. She hadn't liked it at all. She'd been too shocked. Angela remembered, with some pain, the telling off she'd given him, telling him they weren't together and she hadn't meant the boyfriend/girlfriend picture. Well, it turned out that Jacob was right that night when he said they needed each other. He was right. And right now, she needed to find him, wherever he was. If anyone had told her back then, that someday he'd disappear, and she'd be worried about him, searching frantically for him anywhere and anyway she could, she never would have believed them for an instant. But it was true.

The plane began to land as one of the flight attendants stood up to issue instructions. Angela came out of her dreams of the past and stood up with Walter who was putting his newspaper away. Entering the terminal Angela saw someone run past out of the corner of her eye. She turned, to see a bleached head disappearing through the crowd.

"Jacob!" she shouted, and tore off after him. She ran through the crowd of people, eager to see him again. She was excited, and her excitement, kept her from noticing everyone else around her as she chased him down. "Jacob! Where are you?!" she called over the people in the airport. She continued to run, though she couldn't see him anymore. His blond head had disappeared in the crowd. "Come back! Jacob! Jacob! It's me! Please come back! Please!"
But it was no use. He was gone. There were too many people around, too much of a crowd, and they all stared at her as if she was an escapee from the Loony Bin. Finally noticing the crowd around her, Angela quickly walked back to Walter, trying hard to ignore them now.

"Um…..are you OK? What was that all about?" he asked.

"I swear I saw Jacob, but he was too fast for me. I lost him in the crowd. I don't know why he was running, with the Praetorians gone and all. I don't get it."

Walter looked at her, as if he was wondering about her mental capacity for the job he was giving her.

She saw his facial expression. "I know I saw him Walter. And I know you don't think he really exists, but I know he does. You just have to trust me on this."

"Yeah, OK, whatever. Come on, our ride's waiting for us."


Arriving at the FBI training grounds, Angela was shown to her room by a man currently in the second level of training.

"Well, here's your room."

"Ah, thanks."

"Hey, if you need anything, let me know. I'll be happy to tell you who to avoid and where things are and, well, anything you want to know."

"Who to avoid?"

"Well, yeah, some people around here can be quite horrible. You know, like bullies in elementary school."

"Oh. Well, thanks for the info."

"You're welcome. Well, I'll let you unpack and stuff. Just remember dinner is served at 6 in the dinning hall, and there's a meeting for all newcomers at 5 outside on the green and you have to be in uniform. Oh, and one more thing….don't forget my name is Tim Esseray, but my friends, well, back home, they called me Skate."

"Skate?"

"Yeah, it's a nickname, cause I used to like to skate board. I was never without my board."

"Sounds like someone else I know."

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Well, maybe I'll see you around?"

"Maybe."

After Skate had left, Angela unpacked her bag. The small framed picture of Jacob went on the small night stand. Her few clothes went into the closet. She'd be wearing the uniform she'd been given most of the time, so bringing her whole wardrobe hadn't been necessary. She pulled out a brand new journal, and put it in the drawer under Jacob's picture. What little cash she had on her went into the drawer as well. She then stashed her bag in the closet after emptying it and changed into her uniform of khaki pants and a grey t-shirt which read "FBI Trainee" in dark blue on the front and back.


"This training you are all about to undergo, is very rigorous," the director said. She wore the same khaki pants everyone else had on and a t-shirt which read "Trainee Director". Her hair was cut short. "I suggest, if any of you don't think you can go through with this, and graduate from Quantico, that you leave right now, rather than waste your time and ours by being here."

No one left the room.

"Good. That's what I like to see. There are twenty of you here. You will be split up into groups of five and in those groups you will be given a schedule of classes. Please, listen for your name and move to wherever you are told to move."

The director listed off the names and each new trainee joined the group they were assigned. She then handed each person a list of their classes, including times and places.

"When it comes to your weapons courses, you will be issued a weapon at the beginning of each class and you must return it at the end of the class. No one may have or keep any weapon of any kind in their rooms, or they will be taken away. You will have to sign a form at your first class….."

The introduction went on and on. Angela tuned out some of it, thinking that this training could help in her search for Jacob. After the director stopped talking, everyone went to dinner.


"Angela! Over here!" Angela looked up to see Skate motioning her over to his table. Her eyes went from Skate at one end of the room to Walter at the other having his dinner with a few higher ups. She went to join Skate.

"Hey, what's up?" she asked when she sat down.

"Not much. How was the intro?"

"Oh it was truly lovely."

"Thought so. Yeah, I hate those things. So, what classes are you taking?" She showed him the paper. "Oh! We're in the same class!"

"What? How is that possible?"

Skate sighed. "When I was learning how to shoot...I sucked basically and failed that class. But I passed all my others. So, they let me advance to the next level, with the understanding that I'd retake that one class."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Well, it looks like you got some good teachers. Just be nice and don't act like you know everything. They really hate that."

"Gottcha."

"Do you mind if I ask you something personal?"

"What?"

"You seem to have something really big on your mind."

Knowing that the Praetorians were gone, and she could trust people again, she decided it was OK to tell this guy about Jacob's disappearance.

"My best friend disappeared," Angela said, looking back to her plate and quickly shoveling corn into her mouth, almost afraid of what he'd say.

"Disappeared?! Wow. I'm sorry."

"I'm sure he'll turn up somewhere. And hopefully all this FBI training will help with the search too."

"Yeah! That's an idea, in your line of work, you're bound to find him!" Skate said, excited at the thought.

"You have no idea how much I hope you're right."

"Oh," Skate looked up, and then over at Angela with a sense of urgency to his voice.

"What?"

"Are you done eating?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Drakes is on his way over here. Which means we'd best be on the move so he doesn't see us."

"What do you mean? Who?"

Skate nodded towards a tall muscular man with black hair ambling over to their table. There was a group of guys hanging around him. He appeared to be laughing at something funny, one of them had said. Angela saw them look right at Skate and burst into fresh peals of laughter.

"Come on, let's go!"

Skate left the table, taking his tray with him. Angela followed close behind.

"What are you running from? Huh, Skeeter Boy? That a bullet right behind you on your tail?" They all laughed again.

Putting their trays on the automated tray return belt, Skate showed Angela out of the dinning room and outside where it was much quieter. At the far end of a short unused field, well away from the hubbub of everything else, sat a lone tree. They sat down leaning their backs against it for comfort.

"This is a really nice place, Skate. Nice, and quiet."

"And peaceful, I know. I usually come here to escape it all, to relax, to be alone. No one else comes out here but me that I know of. Well, and now you. But that's OK. I'll share my secret with you and only you. Though I think I'm gonna have to make you pinky swear not to tell anyone. OK?"

"Sure."

They stuck out their pinky fingers and she swore she wouldn't tell anyone.

"So who is Drakes?" Angela asked.

"He's just a stupid bully. He thinks he's better than anyone else in the whole world, that's all. He likes to pick on people, you know. Can I ask something though? About your friend Jacob?"

"What about him?" Angela was on her guard, wondering what this guy would possibly want to know about her best friend.

"This whole disappearance thing is kinda weird. I mean, you made it sound like he just one day up and left without a note or anything, and that doesn't make sense. I mean, there must have been circumstances or something to make him runaway or whatever, right?"

Angela sighed. She'd neglected to tell him about the Praetorians for several reasons. First of all, they were already gone, and out of her life. The Praetorians had ceased to exist. And since they weren't around anymore, Jacob's disappearance couldn't possibly have had anything to do with them. And, all that she'd been through because of them, wasn't something she wanted to tell the whole world about. She'd broken into more stores and museums and a travel agency, she'd been with others, Mariano and his men specifically, while they shot and killed Praetorians so that she could get her identity back.

She knew that it was time to start trusting people again almost as much as she'd trusted Jacob. Almost as much. As always, she would trust Jacob with her life. But trusting others, people she didn't know, that much? Telling Skate about Jacob's disappearance at all in the first place, had placed her on the first rung of the ladder of trust. Telling him now, about the Praetorians, or at least part of the story, would land her on the second rung. Looking up, she pictured the ladder in her head, and knew that it was a very tall ladder with a ton of rungs. But she also knew how important this was. How Jacob would be proud of her if he could have been there. Gripping the ladder in her mind, she lifted her right foot off the first rung and started to place it on the second…..

"Have you ever heard of a group of people called the Praetorians?" she began.

"Yeah, I know, it's hard to believe" Skate was still staring at her when she was done telling her story. "But it's true! Those things really happened to me and….and….Jacob and I….well…I guess you could say we got really close. I just wish I could find him. I know, that's all I think about, but I can't help it."

Blinking, he snapped out of his stare, "Hey, it's ok. I know you'll find him somewhere and I'm sure he'll be just fine. And as for the Pratori-whosiwhatsits, I just don't know what to say at all!"

"You mean the Praetorians," there was a small smile on her lips as she spoke. "Yeah, they are crazy. Thank God they're gone."

There was a long silence filled with the sounds of the night as Angela enjoyed the field in her view, glad to be out of the city for awhile, and have the time to relax.


After she'd gotten undressed and into bed, Angela pulled out her journal and pen and began to write:

Dear Jacob,

You're not here, I don't know where you are, but I'm determined to find you, no matter how long it takes, no matter where you are. I'm in FBI training camp right now, and wish you were here to talk to. But you're not, so I figure I'll write everything down and when I do find you, you can read this.

Yes, I got my identity back. It worked. Thanks to you. There was plenty of bloodshed, lots of people died, though I don't think any of Mariano's men did. After he and I were arrested I didn't get the chance to talk to him. I've got a new job now, working for the FBI, can you believe it?! So that's why I'm at Quantico, going through FBI training. I met another guy here. His nickname's Skate. He reminds me a lot of you, though he's a little older than you. You'll be proud of me, I told him the truth. He knows about the Praetorians. About you. My boss doesn't believe you're real. Thinks I'm insane. I know it.

Jacob, I'm on my own now, no longer running for my life, starting to trust people again, on my way to a great job with the FBI and all, but something's missing. You. I miss you Jacob. I wish I could know what happened, where you are. Right now, all I can do is pray that you're still alive and safe. I pray that I will find you soon. That you'll come back to me. When my boss, Walter, and I hooked up the new computers in our office, I checked for you, did searches. But they came up empty. That you didn't exist. What's going on? Where are you?

Jacob, I miss you. -Angel