Someone on Mark's Side
by Tie-B
Chapter III
Disclaimer: Aside from the fictional character Dylan, I don't own anything in this fic.
Many thanks to http://www.hiarchive.co.uk. I couldn't have written the flashback parts accurately without their comprehensive scripts.
---
The hall was starting to get crowded by people stopping by to watch the fight.
Mark was both staring at and slowly backing away from Jason and the guy he was holding by the collar. Lauren was doing the same. Mark had seen Jason mad before, but never this mad. Mark couldn't see anything but rage in his eyes. He felt sorry for the other guy, who was definitely toast.
As Jason pushed his victim up against the locker for a third time, Mark turned to the guy beside him and quietly asked, "What's Jason's problem?"
The guy just shrugged. He probably didn't know anything about what was happening and just stopped by to watch someone get pummeled. A senior behind Mark answered instead. "The new kid spilled info to the girl Jason's been hitting on about Jason's little secret. She avoided Jason after that."
Secret? Mark knew nothing about that. He looked back at the fight wondering what that might be. Jason was still holding on to the new kid's collar with his left hand, and was ready to drive his big right fist into the guy's face.
That's when Mark saw something wrong with the picture before him.
The new kid wasn't scared at all. He wasn't even struggling. In fact, he seemed pretty smug about Jason beating him up.
Why?
Jason threw his punch. And Mark almost missed his answer.
With a quick swipe of his right hand, the new kid grabbed Jason's punching hand and stopped it inches before hitting his face. Jason didn't even have time to react. He just felt all the air from his diaphragm leave as a punch landed on his stomach.
Lauren squeezed through the crowd and got to her boyfriend's younger brother. "Mark!"
No reply. Mark's eyes were fixed at the scene. To Lauren, he looked like a zombie who just found a lunch. The dark clothes probably had something to do with it. She just stared at him for a while, waiting for a response or something.
Still nothing from Mark, but Lauren heard the sound of someone crashing into the lockers and hitting the floor. It was followed by a small cheer from some of the crowd and then, Mark's voice.
"Woah! Did you see that?!"
Lauren couldn't help but giggle at the abrupt change in Mark's face. It went from zombie to happy little puppy in a split second.
"What that other guy did . . . did you see it?!"
Before Lauren could answer Mark's question, the crowd of spectators in the hall parted like a wave as Lakeside's principal was stomped down to the scene of the fight. Jason froze as soon as he noticed the crowd's sudden silence and the principal's aura of authority. In contrast, Jason's opponent was calm even as the principal's menacing glare looked upon the both of them.
The principal was about to scream at them but he was interrupted by the bell that signaled the end of lunch.
"Alright everyone, back to your respective classrooms." At his command, everyone shuffled out.
"I'll talk to you later after school Mark," Lauren whispered before heading down to Science class, but Mark was pretty insistent on talking now despite the principal.
"Lauren! That was karate! That other kid knew karate! He was doing stuff I've seen people with higher belts..."
"Later!" Lauren stole a quick glance at the principal who was reprimanding the two fighters to remind Mark that they have to go back to class.
"Oh, alright..."
As Mark headed for his English class, he didn't even wonder what Lauren wasn't able to tell him before Jason interrupted them's fight. He kept thinking about getting to know that karate kid who beat Jason up. The way Mark saw it, if he were to take karate lessons from him, then he would be able to save his pride and not get away with beating up his brothers without apologizing, and still improve his karate.
---
Mark was back to his locker after class. He took out some of his books he needed to bring home in order to do his homework. There were a lot of them. The last one wouldn't even fit in his backpack.
As Mark struggled to cram everything in his pack, he looked at the locker across his. He was hoping the guy who beat Jason up to drop by there so Mark could talk to him, but he was probably in detention right now.
Mark pulled out the rolled up copy of the school paper from his bag to make room for his Algebra book. Lauren was nowhere in sight, so he decided to just read the paper while waiting.
On the front page was another one of Randy's environment articles. Mark skipped it. He never really found Randy's articles on vegetables and the environment interesting. He liked the articles where Randy would rant endlessly about things he doesn't like though. Mark skipped the next page, and the next page, and the next few pages. Nothing really caught his interest there. The next page had some movie reviews. Mark loved watching movies enough to make him read the reviews, but he skipped reading those about the movies he hasn't seen yet to avoid potential spoilers.
On the next page, Mark stumbled on an advertisement for the school's new online advice column. Mark had heard about it before. The school secretly picked out some students and teachers to run a website where students can send in their questions, ramblings or problems. The team of "Net Angels" as they call themselves, would then give the senders advice on what to do. They also post a few of the questions and their corresponding answers online, under anonymous names of course, in order to protect the privacy of the senders, just like a real magazine advice column. Mark thought it was a vain effort to help students wit their troubles, but for a fleeting moment, the thought of writing to the Net Angels about his problem with his family crossed his mind.
Lauren came down the hall. Mark rolled the paper back up when he saw her coming.
"Hey Mark," she greeted, "Brad and I are gonna go down to the hospital and visit Randy. Would you like to come with us?"
Mark hesitated if he should. He knew that if he went there, Randy would either just ignore him or poke fun at him because he was angry. Mark wanted to avoid Brad too. Besides, Mark didn't need to apologize now anyway because he already found an alternative way to learn karate. They deserved what they got for always picking on him.
On the other hand, Mark still felt guilty. As much as he thought he hated Brad and Randy's guts, the part of him that reminded him that they were his brothers wanted to apologize.
"No," Mark decided. Stomaching his guilt was a small price to pay in order to savor his moment of sweet retribution.
Lauren was surprised by Mark's insensitivity. "What? Why? I mean, your brother is in the hospital because of you and you don't even care?"
"Well," Mark said, showing Lauren is bulging backpack, "for starters, I've got lots of homework..."
Lauren clearly wasn't accepting such a lame excuse.
"Besides, I'd probably just get between you and Randy's sweet time."
If Randy made a joke like that, Lauren would have laughed. Too bad for Mark, he wasn't Randy.
"It's not about us Mark!" Lauren yelled, "It's about you and him. You're brothers. You shouldn't be fighting like that! I just want you to come with me so you can patch things up!"
"Well, you can forget it!" Mark yelled back at the older girl. "I'm not apologizing the them. They never apologized to me when they picked on me! Why should I?! Damnit Lauren, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT ME!" Mark sighed. He didn't mean to yell at Lauren like that, but it did let out some of his stress. "Why should I care about them?" Mark implored her in a softer tone now.
Lauren had no answer to that. As Mark turned away and started to leave, she knew she couldn't do anything for him. She just had to go to the source of the problem: Brad and Randy.
---
Lauren exited the school and she saw Brad waiting for her in his car. Brad rolled down the window a bit.
"Hey Lauren, are you ready?"
Lauren made a disappointed sigh. "Yeah. I am. Thanks for giving me a ride Brad."
Brad opened the passenger seat door and gave Lauren a smile. "It's nothing really. I was going to go down there myself to visit Randy. By the way, what took you so long?"
"I tried to convince Mark to come with us to the hospital," she explained, "He didn't want to go."
"Oh," was Brad's flat reaction. It was followed by a long period of silence.
---
Mark took a walk home. He had lots of time to think. He'd usually go to karate class this time, but that wasn't the case.
He thought of the obvious. He shouldn't have yelled at Lauren like that. The yelling part was bad, but the things he blurted out were worse. Now she's probably going to tell Randy what he thinks about them. They're going to think that he was too sensitive and couldn't take a bunch of jokes.
Maybe it was true? Mark shook his head and dismissed the thought. He wasn't the problem. He wasn't too sensitive. Brad and Randy were just too insensitive.
Mark remembered the time when he saved Randy from being beat up at that shoe store*. Randy didn't even thank him for that.
"That was amazing. It was like I was someone else back there," Mark excitedly told his older brother.
"Yeah, and all those times we wanted you to be someone else, there was... NOTHING!" Randy replied.
That hurt Mark inside. He saved his brother's life and he doesn't even get thanked for it. Would it kill Randy to appreciate him even for just once?
Then there was that time Tim grounded Mark from using the phone for three weeks. * Mark felt so oppressed, but Brad, Randy and even his own dad didn't fail to add insult to injury.
"Angela's probably married by now," Brad exclaimed. His mom was using the only phone line in the house back then.
"By the time I get to use the phone, all my friends will be in their retirement home," Mark added. Tim taunted Mark with a fake bawl.
"Mark, quit exaggerating," said Randy, "You don't have any friends."
With Jill limiting all their phone time to forty-five minutes, Mark thought that he and his brothers were on the same side during this incident. He was wrong.
Nobody ever really sided with him. Nobody.
Mark began to fill himself with hate and angst. His guilt slowly drained out of him.
As he walked down the sidewalk, he angrily side kicked a garbage can, knocking it over. Its contents spilled ad made a huge mess.
---
"No way! You mean you saw the whole fight between Jason and that freshman?!" Brad exclaimed in disbelief.
"What fight? What freshman?" Randy was confused. He hadn't heard of the fight yet.
Lauren tried to keep up with all the questions. "Yeah. Sort of. Mark and I were both there. He saw more of it than I did."
"So what happened? Did Jason beat the kid up?"
"It wasn't just a kid Randy. It was Dylan Hunter."
"You know him?" Lauren asked.
"I don't know him personally. I'd rather stay away from him. He's dangerous. They say he got booted out of his old school for nearly killing someone in a fight. I even heard that he actually keeps nun chucks in his locker."
Brad's warning summoned a moment of silence to the room. Randy's extra deep breaths were audible. He'd been breathing like that ever since he came out of the emergency room. The doctors said it was supposed to help keep his lungs from collapsing, and after Randy's "cancer" incident, he wasn't taking any chances, even though every breath had a slight hint of pain.
"So Lauren," Randy broke the silence, "will you be writing about that on the paper?"
Lauren shook her head, "After what Brad said? Forget it. Besides, I don't really like writing about fights. They all seem so pointless."
Brad took a glance at his watch. 6:00 PM. He got up and picked up his bag. "Look guys, I have to go now. I still have a report to finish." He went over to the bed and messed up his little brother's hair. "I'll just drop by here tomorrow Randy buddy."
Brad was already about to open the door, but Lauren stopped him.
"Wait!"
Brad looked over his shoulder at Lauren with raised eyebrows.
Lauren was a bit hesitant to talk about it. She felt she had no right to interfere, but right now, she felt that she was the only one who could fix the broken relationship between the two brothers and their younger sibling. "We need to talk..."
Lauren's face was serious. Brad felt he already knew what she wanted to say. Being the big brother of the family, he'd been wanting to talk to Randy about it too; only he couldn't really do it in front of Lauren because it was something between the three of them. Looks like there was no avoiding it now. Brad walked back to his chair and sat down.
Randy never thought that he would feel so left out for missing just one day of school. "So what's this about?" he asked.
"Mark." Brad and Lauren grimly answered in unison.
---
Mark finished his History homework and slammed his book shut. That was the last piece of homework he had to do for the day. He stuffed everything back in his backpack so he wouldn't forget anything in the morning.
Mark checked his wall clock. It was 7:00 PM. Brad still wasn't home yet. He was probably busy talking to his favorite brother in the hospital. Tim and Jill left for the hospital half an hour ago to check up on Randy too. They didn't pass up the chance to try to get him to go with them though.
Mark used the homework excuse again. They saw though it and tried to talk to him. Mark just poured out his hate.
"He deserved that punch! He deserves to be there!" Mark shot.
Jill was frustrated by her son's insubordination. "How could you say that? He's your brother!"
"Well, he never really acted like one to me!"
Jill was stunned. She never knew Mark felt that way.
Tim came in Mark's room. "Honey, let's go. Randy's waiting."
Jill decided that she needed more time to think. She put off straightening Mark out for tomorrow and headed with Tim for the garage.
The words still rang in Mark's head.
"He's your brother!"
Mark's hate subsided. Guilt began to fill the empty spaces in him making his stomach turn.
He still couldn't figure out why he felt so awful after finally tasting his long overdue revenge. Mark wondered if he would be feeling as awful as he was if he just let the harsh words that started this mess slide.
No, he wouldn't. He would just feel the same way as he used to. A pincushion. It felt a lot better than feeling guilty, but still, it wasn't what Mark wanted. He wanted to feel appreciated, loved by his brothers.
After putting all his homework in his bag, Mark remembered the school paper, and the thought he had in school a while ago crossed his mind again.
Maybe they could actually help? There was only one way to find out and he really had nothing left to lose.
Mark strolled down the stairs and headed for his mom's computer. Being his mom's computer consultant, he knew how to operate the thing and he knew it had access to the internet.
He opened the browser and punched in the Net Angel URL on the keyboard.
---
* events from the actual series.
by Tie-B
Chapter III
Disclaimer: Aside from the fictional character Dylan, I don't own anything in this fic.
Many thanks to http://www.hiarchive.co.uk. I couldn't have written the flashback parts accurately without their comprehensive scripts.
---
The hall was starting to get crowded by people stopping by to watch the fight.
Mark was both staring at and slowly backing away from Jason and the guy he was holding by the collar. Lauren was doing the same. Mark had seen Jason mad before, but never this mad. Mark couldn't see anything but rage in his eyes. He felt sorry for the other guy, who was definitely toast.
As Jason pushed his victim up against the locker for a third time, Mark turned to the guy beside him and quietly asked, "What's Jason's problem?"
The guy just shrugged. He probably didn't know anything about what was happening and just stopped by to watch someone get pummeled. A senior behind Mark answered instead. "The new kid spilled info to the girl Jason's been hitting on about Jason's little secret. She avoided Jason after that."
Secret? Mark knew nothing about that. He looked back at the fight wondering what that might be. Jason was still holding on to the new kid's collar with his left hand, and was ready to drive his big right fist into the guy's face.
That's when Mark saw something wrong with the picture before him.
The new kid wasn't scared at all. He wasn't even struggling. In fact, he seemed pretty smug about Jason beating him up.
Why?
Jason threw his punch. And Mark almost missed his answer.
With a quick swipe of his right hand, the new kid grabbed Jason's punching hand and stopped it inches before hitting his face. Jason didn't even have time to react. He just felt all the air from his diaphragm leave as a punch landed on his stomach.
Lauren squeezed through the crowd and got to her boyfriend's younger brother. "Mark!"
No reply. Mark's eyes were fixed at the scene. To Lauren, he looked like a zombie who just found a lunch. The dark clothes probably had something to do with it. She just stared at him for a while, waiting for a response or something.
Still nothing from Mark, but Lauren heard the sound of someone crashing into the lockers and hitting the floor. It was followed by a small cheer from some of the crowd and then, Mark's voice.
"Woah! Did you see that?!"
Lauren couldn't help but giggle at the abrupt change in Mark's face. It went from zombie to happy little puppy in a split second.
"What that other guy did . . . did you see it?!"
Before Lauren could answer Mark's question, the crowd of spectators in the hall parted like a wave as Lakeside's principal was stomped down to the scene of the fight. Jason froze as soon as he noticed the crowd's sudden silence and the principal's aura of authority. In contrast, Jason's opponent was calm even as the principal's menacing glare looked upon the both of them.
The principal was about to scream at them but he was interrupted by the bell that signaled the end of lunch.
"Alright everyone, back to your respective classrooms." At his command, everyone shuffled out.
"I'll talk to you later after school Mark," Lauren whispered before heading down to Science class, but Mark was pretty insistent on talking now despite the principal.
"Lauren! That was karate! That other kid knew karate! He was doing stuff I've seen people with higher belts..."
"Later!" Lauren stole a quick glance at the principal who was reprimanding the two fighters to remind Mark that they have to go back to class.
"Oh, alright..."
As Mark headed for his English class, he didn't even wonder what Lauren wasn't able to tell him before Jason interrupted them's fight. He kept thinking about getting to know that karate kid who beat Jason up. The way Mark saw it, if he were to take karate lessons from him, then he would be able to save his pride and not get away with beating up his brothers without apologizing, and still improve his karate.
---
Mark was back to his locker after class. He took out some of his books he needed to bring home in order to do his homework. There were a lot of them. The last one wouldn't even fit in his backpack.
As Mark struggled to cram everything in his pack, he looked at the locker across his. He was hoping the guy who beat Jason up to drop by there so Mark could talk to him, but he was probably in detention right now.
Mark pulled out the rolled up copy of the school paper from his bag to make room for his Algebra book. Lauren was nowhere in sight, so he decided to just read the paper while waiting.
On the front page was another one of Randy's environment articles. Mark skipped it. He never really found Randy's articles on vegetables and the environment interesting. He liked the articles where Randy would rant endlessly about things he doesn't like though. Mark skipped the next page, and the next page, and the next few pages. Nothing really caught his interest there. The next page had some movie reviews. Mark loved watching movies enough to make him read the reviews, but he skipped reading those about the movies he hasn't seen yet to avoid potential spoilers.
On the next page, Mark stumbled on an advertisement for the school's new online advice column. Mark had heard about it before. The school secretly picked out some students and teachers to run a website where students can send in their questions, ramblings or problems. The team of "Net Angels" as they call themselves, would then give the senders advice on what to do. They also post a few of the questions and their corresponding answers online, under anonymous names of course, in order to protect the privacy of the senders, just like a real magazine advice column. Mark thought it was a vain effort to help students wit their troubles, but for a fleeting moment, the thought of writing to the Net Angels about his problem with his family crossed his mind.
Lauren came down the hall. Mark rolled the paper back up when he saw her coming.
"Hey Mark," she greeted, "Brad and I are gonna go down to the hospital and visit Randy. Would you like to come with us?"
Mark hesitated if he should. He knew that if he went there, Randy would either just ignore him or poke fun at him because he was angry. Mark wanted to avoid Brad too. Besides, Mark didn't need to apologize now anyway because he already found an alternative way to learn karate. They deserved what they got for always picking on him.
On the other hand, Mark still felt guilty. As much as he thought he hated Brad and Randy's guts, the part of him that reminded him that they were his brothers wanted to apologize.
"No," Mark decided. Stomaching his guilt was a small price to pay in order to savor his moment of sweet retribution.
Lauren was surprised by Mark's insensitivity. "What? Why? I mean, your brother is in the hospital because of you and you don't even care?"
"Well," Mark said, showing Lauren is bulging backpack, "for starters, I've got lots of homework..."
Lauren clearly wasn't accepting such a lame excuse.
"Besides, I'd probably just get between you and Randy's sweet time."
If Randy made a joke like that, Lauren would have laughed. Too bad for Mark, he wasn't Randy.
"It's not about us Mark!" Lauren yelled, "It's about you and him. You're brothers. You shouldn't be fighting like that! I just want you to come with me so you can patch things up!"
"Well, you can forget it!" Mark yelled back at the older girl. "I'm not apologizing the them. They never apologized to me when they picked on me! Why should I?! Damnit Lauren, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT ME!" Mark sighed. He didn't mean to yell at Lauren like that, but it did let out some of his stress. "Why should I care about them?" Mark implored her in a softer tone now.
Lauren had no answer to that. As Mark turned away and started to leave, she knew she couldn't do anything for him. She just had to go to the source of the problem: Brad and Randy.
---
Lauren exited the school and she saw Brad waiting for her in his car. Brad rolled down the window a bit.
"Hey Lauren, are you ready?"
Lauren made a disappointed sigh. "Yeah. I am. Thanks for giving me a ride Brad."
Brad opened the passenger seat door and gave Lauren a smile. "It's nothing really. I was going to go down there myself to visit Randy. By the way, what took you so long?"
"I tried to convince Mark to come with us to the hospital," she explained, "He didn't want to go."
"Oh," was Brad's flat reaction. It was followed by a long period of silence.
---
Mark took a walk home. He had lots of time to think. He'd usually go to karate class this time, but that wasn't the case.
He thought of the obvious. He shouldn't have yelled at Lauren like that. The yelling part was bad, but the things he blurted out were worse. Now she's probably going to tell Randy what he thinks about them. They're going to think that he was too sensitive and couldn't take a bunch of jokes.
Maybe it was true? Mark shook his head and dismissed the thought. He wasn't the problem. He wasn't too sensitive. Brad and Randy were just too insensitive.
Mark remembered the time when he saved Randy from being beat up at that shoe store*. Randy didn't even thank him for that.
"That was amazing. It was like I was someone else back there," Mark excitedly told his older brother.
"Yeah, and all those times we wanted you to be someone else, there was... NOTHING!" Randy replied.
That hurt Mark inside. He saved his brother's life and he doesn't even get thanked for it. Would it kill Randy to appreciate him even for just once?
Then there was that time Tim grounded Mark from using the phone for three weeks. * Mark felt so oppressed, but Brad, Randy and even his own dad didn't fail to add insult to injury.
"Angela's probably married by now," Brad exclaimed. His mom was using the only phone line in the house back then.
"By the time I get to use the phone, all my friends will be in their retirement home," Mark added. Tim taunted Mark with a fake bawl.
"Mark, quit exaggerating," said Randy, "You don't have any friends."
With Jill limiting all their phone time to forty-five minutes, Mark thought that he and his brothers were on the same side during this incident. He was wrong.
Nobody ever really sided with him. Nobody.
Mark began to fill himself with hate and angst. His guilt slowly drained out of him.
As he walked down the sidewalk, he angrily side kicked a garbage can, knocking it over. Its contents spilled ad made a huge mess.
---
"No way! You mean you saw the whole fight between Jason and that freshman?!" Brad exclaimed in disbelief.
"What fight? What freshman?" Randy was confused. He hadn't heard of the fight yet.
Lauren tried to keep up with all the questions. "Yeah. Sort of. Mark and I were both there. He saw more of it than I did."
"So what happened? Did Jason beat the kid up?"
"It wasn't just a kid Randy. It was Dylan Hunter."
"You know him?" Lauren asked.
"I don't know him personally. I'd rather stay away from him. He's dangerous. They say he got booted out of his old school for nearly killing someone in a fight. I even heard that he actually keeps nun chucks in his locker."
Brad's warning summoned a moment of silence to the room. Randy's extra deep breaths were audible. He'd been breathing like that ever since he came out of the emergency room. The doctors said it was supposed to help keep his lungs from collapsing, and after Randy's "cancer" incident, he wasn't taking any chances, even though every breath had a slight hint of pain.
"So Lauren," Randy broke the silence, "will you be writing about that on the paper?"
Lauren shook her head, "After what Brad said? Forget it. Besides, I don't really like writing about fights. They all seem so pointless."
Brad took a glance at his watch. 6:00 PM. He got up and picked up his bag. "Look guys, I have to go now. I still have a report to finish." He went over to the bed and messed up his little brother's hair. "I'll just drop by here tomorrow Randy buddy."
Brad was already about to open the door, but Lauren stopped him.
"Wait!"
Brad looked over his shoulder at Lauren with raised eyebrows.
Lauren was a bit hesitant to talk about it. She felt she had no right to interfere, but right now, she felt that she was the only one who could fix the broken relationship between the two brothers and their younger sibling. "We need to talk..."
Lauren's face was serious. Brad felt he already knew what she wanted to say. Being the big brother of the family, he'd been wanting to talk to Randy about it too; only he couldn't really do it in front of Lauren because it was something between the three of them. Looks like there was no avoiding it now. Brad walked back to his chair and sat down.
Randy never thought that he would feel so left out for missing just one day of school. "So what's this about?" he asked.
"Mark." Brad and Lauren grimly answered in unison.
---
Mark finished his History homework and slammed his book shut. That was the last piece of homework he had to do for the day. He stuffed everything back in his backpack so he wouldn't forget anything in the morning.
Mark checked his wall clock. It was 7:00 PM. Brad still wasn't home yet. He was probably busy talking to his favorite brother in the hospital. Tim and Jill left for the hospital half an hour ago to check up on Randy too. They didn't pass up the chance to try to get him to go with them though.
Mark used the homework excuse again. They saw though it and tried to talk to him. Mark just poured out his hate.
"He deserved that punch! He deserves to be there!" Mark shot.
Jill was frustrated by her son's insubordination. "How could you say that? He's your brother!"
"Well, he never really acted like one to me!"
Jill was stunned. She never knew Mark felt that way.
Tim came in Mark's room. "Honey, let's go. Randy's waiting."
Jill decided that she needed more time to think. She put off straightening Mark out for tomorrow and headed with Tim for the garage.
The words still rang in Mark's head.
"He's your brother!"
Mark's hate subsided. Guilt began to fill the empty spaces in him making his stomach turn.
He still couldn't figure out why he felt so awful after finally tasting his long overdue revenge. Mark wondered if he would be feeling as awful as he was if he just let the harsh words that started this mess slide.
No, he wouldn't. He would just feel the same way as he used to. A pincushion. It felt a lot better than feeling guilty, but still, it wasn't what Mark wanted. He wanted to feel appreciated, loved by his brothers.
After putting all his homework in his bag, Mark remembered the school paper, and the thought he had in school a while ago crossed his mind again.
Maybe they could actually help? There was only one way to find out and he really had nothing left to lose.
Mark strolled down the stairs and headed for his mom's computer. Being his mom's computer consultant, he knew how to operate the thing and he knew it had access to the internet.
He opened the browser and punched in the Net Angel URL on the keyboard.
---
* events from the actual series.