Title: The Mystery of the Missing Geek- Part One
Author: Dru
E-mail: Url: http/bloodstains. Category:Gen/Het
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kimmy is nowhere to be found, however when Rebecca recieves and E-mail-things take a dangerous turn. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part five in the 'Objects out of Place' series.

A/N: I just got Bree Sharp's A Good And Evil Girl. sings David Duchovny/I know you could love me/I'm sweet and I'm cuddly/I'm gonna kill Scully...so yeah I'm hyper...really hyper, keep that in mind. This is going to be in two parts but I'll try to get part two out as soon as I can.

Entr'acte Sprite: Thanks for the review, hope you enjoy this chapter.


He watched the apartment through his binoculars, in the early morning sunlight he was barely to make out the lanky form hunched over the computer. It was past dawn, but he hasn't slept at all yet. He knows his accomplice should be coming in a couple of hours to carry out the plan, and he wants to be alert when they bring their victim to their hideout. A slip up could cost them everything at this stage.

Getting up from his hiding place in the apartment across the street from his victim, the man stretches out and places the binoculars on the dust covered coffee table next to his stack of magazines and empty pizza box. After picking up his handgun and tucking inside his jacket, he walked out the front door. It closed with a thud, dust coming off of it in a light brown cloud before settling to the ground.


Squinting her eyes in the early morning light, Rebecca Morris climbed out from underneath her many layers of covers. Winter was coming, and already a cold chill had come over Washington D.C. She shivered, mentally reprimanding herself for not buying warmer pajamas to replace the thin ones she had worn in L.A. After wrapping her thick comforter around her body for warmth, she hopped off of the bed and onto her cold hardwood floor.

She was sure that she had turned on the heat last night, it shouldn't have been as cold as it was. Padding over to her thermostat she discovered that, indeed, it should be much warmer than it was. She figured she'd yell at the manager about it, she was pretty sure that she was cursed. First the mix-up with her stuff, they did end up finding it and refunding her money but she was without her stuff for nearly a week, and now her apartment building was falling apart around her.

Maybe she was exaggerating that a bit, ascetically the building looked fine. However, when you actually moved in you discovered that the lights decided when they would like to work and the heat didn't work at all. It was only really a problem in the morning and at night, most of the time she wasn't even home; this was evident in the multitude of boxes still lying around, instead she was at The Lone Gunman offices. Of course, it wasn't really an office, it was more like an electronic store that had never heard of the concept of decent lighting.

Coffee, she decided that she needed some coffee. And not that instant crap that was sitting in her cupboard, first of all she didn't even have a coffee maker, which made having instant coffee around rather pointless, and secondly Starbucks made much better coffee than her. And that was exactly where she decided to go.


The jeep drove through the busy Washington D.C. streets, being careful not to drive faster than the speed limit. He didn't want to be stopped and have his car recorded as being in the D.C. area. He knew that he was being more cautious than the situation warranted. It was unlikely that anyone would miss their victim for some time, and even if they did a little digging they already had a way to make it seem as if all was well.

He parked the car in a side lot of the large apartment complex, grabbing his necessary supplies from the back seat: duct tape, two pistols, a lock pick, and a switchblade-just in case, he carefully concealed them within his long trenchcoat and walked up to the front entrance of the building.

The front lobby was rather small and the overall shabbiness of the building made him wonder why someone in their victim's line of work would choose to live in a place like this, he could obviously afford much better. The building was 5 stories tall and didn't even have an elevator. Their victim lived on the 5th floor but he didn't mind the stairs, he had a two hour time window.

He reached the apartment in under 15 minutes and rang the door bell, listening to it echo inside the apartment. When his victim answered the door he placed his hand over his mouth and shoved him back into the apartment, drawing one of his guns from his coat.


Rebecca fumbled through her purse, searching for her wallet to pay for the coffee she had ordered. After looking like a fool, standing in front of the counter for around 5 minutes before finally finding her wallet. It turned out that she was 50 cents short since she had to shell out some money to buy a sweater since it was so cold both inside and outside of her apartment. Luckily the woman behind her in line gave her the money she needed, so she didn't have to go into work cold and sleepy.

She walked outside the shop just in time to be nearly run over by a jeep as she tried to cross the street. She managed to run to the other side in time to avoid being run over. By now she was pretty sure that today would only get worse from here. Even more so when some rude guy with one arm bumped into her and made her spill her coffee all over the street.

By the time she had arrived at work she was exhausted, only having been able to have a little bit of coffee before it spilled, and her new scarf had blown away in the wind. She had retrieved it though, only after it had landed in a puddle. She sighed as she walked down the stairs to the front door of the office. She only hoped that this day couldn't get any worse.


He shoved his victim back into his own apartment, closing the door behind them. His eyes had gone wide with terror and he was trying to get him off.

"You are coming with me," he pulled his roll of duct tape from his jacket and used it to secure his victim's wrists.

"Please don't kill me," the victim whimpered, struggling to free his hands.

"Oh don't worry," he wrapped some more duct tape over his mouth, "You're too valuable for that,"

He pulled his squirming victim into the living room of his messy apartment. The kidnapper couldn't help but be disgusted at the general disarray of the place. No only was it messy, but there were stacks of porn all over the floor accompanied by equal amounts of naughty posters adorning the walls. He had no doubts in his mind of what were on the tapes scattered around the TV.

"You disgust me, boy," he said out loud, voicing his disapproval. He pulled a blanket off of the couch and threw his victim onto the floor. "Lie still," he ordered as he wrapped the blanket around him like a cocoon, hiding him from view. "If you move while I'm carrying you I'll shoot," he pressed the barrel of the gun against his face through the blanket to show him he wasn't joking.

He picked up the blanket with his victim inside it and carried it out of the apartment and out to his car, placing him in the back seat and driving away to his hideout.


"Hey Rebecca," Jimmy greeted her as she walked inside the building. She smiled at him, covering up her bad morning as she sat down in front of the computer to work on her article.

"Hey Beck," Langly said, coming from the kitchen. She rolled her eyes, he had started calling her Beck a couple of weeks ago and she hadn't really had the heart to tell him she hated the nickname. He seemed to like calling her it. She managed to keep her from smacking him by telling herself that at least it wasn't Becky. She had always hated that name, ever since college, and would not tolerate being called that anymore. The last time someone had called her that she ended up kicking him in the crotch. "Wanna come with me to go get Kimmy?" he asked, walking behind where she was sitting.

"Who's Kimmy?" she asked, not having heard that name before.

"A hacker, I need his help to hack into the DOD," he replied, shoving the keys to the van in his pocket. "He hasn't been answering his phone,"

"I need to finish this article," she went back to typing.

"Suit yourself," he walked out the door, closing it behind him with a thud.

"Jimmy lock the door!" Frohike yelled, hearing Langly leave.

Rebecca continued to work on her articles, they were having her do lots of them, for the next hour or so. During the same amount of time Jimmy had managed to: set the kitchen on fire, twice, once with Frohike in it, make a hole in a wall when he was trying to carry a lamp into Byer's room, and nearly crush Byers with said lamp. It seems that he wasn't having a much better day than she was.

About fifteen minutes after Byers had nearly been turned into a pancake, Langly returned, with no Kimmy. This immediately aroused the other two Gunmen's suspicions.

"Where's Kimmy?" Frohike asked from his seat on their ugly red couch.

"He wasn't there. I checked all of his hangouts but he wasn't at any of those either," he walked into his room and came out carrying his trusty laptop. "I'm going to try to see if I can find him,"

"It'll be like a needle in a haystack," Byers reminded him.

"I know but we really need this hack," he opened his laptop and began to type in that quick way that he always did, like he was mad at the keyboard, or like pounding on it like that would make his objective occur faster that way. Rebecca had to admit that Langly did fascinate her and she had caught herself watching him on more than one occasion. Of course there was that little tidbit that kept her from pursuing him; he was her boss. He didn't act like it at all, and technically the four of them were paying her under the table to avoid taxes and all that, but still he was her boss. It would just be awkward, she had always avoided dating co-workers after seeing it ruin so many of her friends.

She sighed, turning back to her computer and began another article on-what was it again? She glanced down at her paper of notes from which she would compile the story, oh yes-it was to be on a series of abductions occurring around Hershey, PA. Her pet theory was that, since most of the "abductees" were teenagers, it was some sort of elaborate prank. Rebecca idly remembered when nearly her entire senior class participated in a similar prank, convincing most of their teachers that the school lunch was poisoned and that several students had dropped dead as a result. Looking back on it, she had to admit it was quite a cruel prank; but it was something that teenagers found amusing.

However much she believed her idea to be true, she would never share it with the others, they were too addicted to the story. They were too engrossed in the unbelievable, usually, to accept any other explanation until it smacked them in the faces. She typed out the words on the monitor that she really didn't believe but would continue to write because it was her job. Of course, sometimes she thought that maybe it wasn't the Gunmen who were too out there but it was her who was to grounded to believe the unexplained. Sometimes she felt like a regular skeptic, a background in journalism will do that to you.

Trolling the web for some more information she could glean from some of the major news sites, the little pop-up window came up indicating that someone had just sent an e-mail to them. Thank god, she thought, that it didn't' have the annoying 'you've got mail' voice that came along with it. She clicked on it, it was from an e-mail address she didn't recognize and she was just plain curious, a background in journalism will do that to you too.

TO: Manhammer? Rebecca looked at the e-mail address and rolled her eyes, recognizing Langly's Dungeons and Dragons alias. The other name, Badmittionlvr, didn't really sound like a gamer's name. Unless said gamer was over 60 and living in a retirement community in Florida. She continued to read the rest of the message.

SUBJECT: You OWE me...HELP!

Langly, you and your little band of merry girls better get your asses down here right now! I've been kidnapped, they're keeping me captive at a 'Happy Trails Campgrounds', somewhere in Northern Virginia-I think. And they're going to kill me one I finish their hack. I can't type more, they're coming back.

Kimmy

P.S.- My computer is sent to send out embarrassing pictures of you after that prank at last year's D&D convention posthumously, if that gives you any incentive to help me.

Rebecca printed out the e-mail immediately after she had finished reading it, feeling rather triumphant as she had just, by pure accident, done what Langly was still trying to do. While she didn't know where Happy Trails Campgrounds was, she assumed that it could be anywhere from Arizona to Maine, she did know that they were several steps closer to finding Langly's elusive friend than they were a few minutes ago.

"Langly, guess who found Kimmy?" she gloated, holding up the print out of the e-mail for him to see.

"What? How?" he asked, dashing over to where she was sitting and ripping, quite literally-a corner had come off in her hand, the piece of paper from her outstretched hand. "He sent you an e-mail?"

"No, he send you an e-mail," she corrected. "I just happened to be at the computer when it arrived,"

"Where's 'Happy Trails Campgrounds'?" he asked, looking up from the e-mail at her.

"I don't know, I just got the e-mail," she said, pulling up MapQuest. "But I can find out,"

"Let me, you're not good with computers," he ordered, grabbing the mouse.

"I do perfectly fine with computers," she shoed his hand away from the mouse. "And I am capable of using MapQuest,"

"You nearly wiped the memory clean on my laptop last week," he argued, pushing her in the swivel chair away from the computer.

"You're the computer nerd, you should know it's very hard to completely erase memory on a computer," but she rolled her eyes and sat still on the chair, wondering not for the first time why she was so fascinated by him.

"Still, you're not coming near my laptop again," he said possessively, typing on the keyboard with the same ferocity that he had been before.

"Stop bickering, children," Frohike said, coming up behind Langly with Byers right behind him.

"Ignore Langly, he's a bit rude sometimes," Jimmy whispered in her ear as he looked over Byers's shoulder.

"I think he's just PMSing," she whispered back, earning a loud laugh from Jimmy that the three Gunmen didn't notice. It was probably better that they didn't, she didn't really want to explain why Jimmy suddenly started laughing-actually it was more like giggling.

"Found it," Langly declared triumphantly, printing out the MapQuest directions. "We'd better get going, who knows how long Kimmy's got left,"

"I'm coming," Jimmy proclaimed loudly.

"No you're not. We'll be gone a while, you and Rebecca need to stay here and make sure the next issue of The Lone Gunman comes out on time," Byers explained, gathering some items to take along.

"And I'm taking my laptop," Langly called out from his room where he was packing a few t-shirts and other things he would need.

"That just keeps on getting funnier and funnier,"


The Gunmen had been gone for three hours, venturing out into Virginia to locate Kimmy and leaving Rebecca and Jimmy back at headquarters, she had dubbed it the Bat Cave because it certainly resembled that, to scramble to get the next issue of The Lone Gunmen out on time. Of course, that was what they should be doing. Jimmy was currently sitting on the couch, sulking. And Rebecca had given up on her article for today, just to spite Langly and was currently making a nice 2 o' clock dinner for her and Jimmy. If popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Pepsi even could be considered dinner.

Her excuse for the lack of actual food in the dinner she was preparing was that the Gunmen didn't keep much food around. Jimmy was the only one that really cooked, Frohike did sometimes too but he wasn't all that good. In fact, judging from the expiration date on the milk in the fridge and the multitude of junk food wrappers on the floor, she guessed that they had been eating take out for at least a week.

While she was on her second attempt to properly cook grilled cheese, she didn't feel bad at all about wasting all of their cheese, the screech of the doorbell startled her and before she really knew what was happening there were two grilled cheese sandwiches stuck on the ceiling. Just as she was marveling her new accomplishment, it takes a great deal of skill to get something stuck on the ceiling, Jimmy opened the door and Yves walked inside, dragging Jimmy along with her.

"We've got a problem," Yves said as Rebecca came out of the kitchen to see who had arrived.

"What?" Jimmy asked, as Yves walked deeper into the offices, walking among shelves and scanning the walls.

"There is another exit isn't there?" Yves asked urgently, hurrying up a bit.

"Yes, why?" asked Rebecca, following Yves around with Jimmy right behind her.

"Because the sooner we can leave the sooner we can all avoid death," her eyes darted to the light gray smoke that was floating in under the main door. "We need to get out now," she grabbed both Jimmy's and Rebecca's arms and pulled them towards a door she just saw.

"That leads to a...a...," Rebecca started to tell her that that was a closet but she felt a sudden drowsiness overcome her, as she struggled to stay on her feet. She heard Yves swear and Jimmy express his confusion as all three of them hit the floor. Soon after a great curtain of black settled over the three of them as a man dressed in a nice suit opened the door and walked in with a gas mask over his face.


Pulling into the parking lot of the now abandoned 'Happy Trails Campground' the Lone Gunmen looked around for any signs that may lead them to Kimmy before his kidnappers had the chance to kill him. They parked their van and got out, surveying the area but not seeing anything that might be useful. Then after about ten minutes of searching-

"Hey guys!" Frohike exclaimed. "I found something,"

"What?" Langly and Byers came running up behind him, peering over his shoulder as he pointed out the tire tracks.

"A car came through here recently," he pushed some grass out of the way of the tire tracks to get a better look of them.

"Let's follow it. Right now it's our best lead," Byers suggested.

"Right," Langly said, following Byers and Frohike through the waist high grass growing wild around the parking lot. It was difficult to follow the path since someone had tried to erase it. The coverup seemed to have been done hastily as if they needed to be somewhere quickly, either that or they didn't really care.

After walking along that path for two hours, and sincerely wishing that they had decided to drive the van but convincing themselves that it would only be a little further and going back would take unnecessary time, they arrived at a small shack perched onto of a steep hill. They struggled with that and nearly caused a landslide before the reached the shack at last.

They could see inside the rotting structure without even having to open the equally decrepit door. Whole chunks of wood were gone from the walls and within they could see quite a surprising sight, a fairly new silver TV set was sitting on the ground attached to a portable generator.

"What the?" Langly was the first to see the TV and he ran around to the front and opened the door, walking inside. He saw that the TV was one of the newer kinds with a VCR built into it.

"What is this?" Byers asked, walking inside, following Langly with Frohike behind him.

"Should we turn it on?" Langly pondered out loud, as Frohike reached from behind him and turned on the power button.

"Might as well," he replied, noticing that there was a tape lying next to the TV. "We should play it,"

"What do you think is on it?" Byers asked.

"Wont know until we press," he put the tape in the VCR and pressed "play".

The, previously blue, TV screen came to life. It flashed to black and then showed the text 'Welcome Lone Gunmen'.

"Someone knew we were coming," Langly said, pointing out the obvious.

Then a foreign face appeared on the screen, it was a man with short blonde hair and matching mustache. None of the Gunmen recognized him, they hadn't seen him before. He was standing on what appeared to be a dock on a lake or a river. There was green foliage around him and you could see the other shore not too far away from the one the man was standing on.

"I'm sure you do not recognize me. You shouldn't, it was only recently that I discovered you. Specifically you, Richard-" Langly twitched noticeably at the mention of his first name. "When I discovered that our little victim," at this point the camera panned around to show a unconscious Kimmy lying on his side in the wet grass "had sent an e-mail to you. I figured it might be fun to get you three involved. I seldom have any fun these days," he smiled and laughed to himself. "I didn't even really need the money I got from his hack. I just wanted the challenge of kidnapping him, which wasn't much of a challenge at all. So now, here we are. You at the shack at the old campgrounds, and me at an unnamed dock. Now this doesn't seem much fun so I'd thought that I would throw some more people in, make it a game,"

At this point in the video the camera moved again to show Kimmy, but then moved a little further to show the still bodies of Yves, Rebecca, and Jimmy.

"That son of a bitch," Frohike swore, shaking his head.

"This is just sick," Byers commented, his voice thick with disgust.

"Now, here's the game," another large and bulky man walked into the view of the camera. "My college here will load these four," he gestured to the four lying on the grass. "Into this Plexiglas container," he pointed to a very large container about 8 feet long 5 feet wide and 6 feet deep. "And then we will drop them into this," he gestured to the lake behind him. "Now you see the game, if you can't figure out where your friends are 'buried' before seven o' clock on Wednesday, that's tomorrow boys. They'll die. You see we're going to be pumping air into the box," the camera moved to the Plexiglas box again and they could clearly see a bunch of air tanks lying next to it. "They'll die"

"Bastard," Langly muttered through clenched teeth.

"Of course, it wouldn't be very sporting if I didn't give you a clue would it?" he said, smirking the entire time as the burly man dropped the bodies into the container unceremoniously as if he was dealing with a sack of potatoes. "So here you go, the clue is 'There once was a man from Peru, who dreamed he was eating his shoe, he woke with a fright, in the middle of the night to find that his dream had come true," The three Gunmen shared confused looks. "Ta da for now," he waved and the screen went black.

"I can't believe this. What kind of clue was that?" Langly was angry, this guy was doing this for no other reason than he was bored? The sick freak.

"Well, think about it. It's obviously a poem," Byers said, as angry as Langly but trying to stay calm in an effort to help them find their friends.

"Maybe it's Poem River," Frohike suggested.

"Or Poem Lake," Langly added, running out of the shack. "We have to get going as soon as we can, we don't have much time,"


Groggily Rebecca lifted her head above the hard surface it was lying on. For a moment she thought she was still at the Lone Gunmen offices but before long she realized that that was definitely not the case. After all, one generally didn't see fishes swimming by just feet from their heads in the Lone Gunmen offices. She sat up quickly and noticed that they were underwater. And by they, she meant Jimmy, Yves, her, and someone she didn't recognize whom she assumed to be Kimmy.

The second thing she noticed besides the fact that they were who knows how far underwater, the water was so murky she couldn't really tell, was the complicated system of scuba tanks and other pipes all along one face of their Plexiglas box. She could hear the whir of a fan and assumed it was pumping air into the box and taking it out. Those sadistic bastards, whoever had put them here.

No one else was awake yet she noticed, wondering how they had gotten here and where here was. Something she found funny though was the fact that Jimmy was lying on top of Yves, drooling onto her top.

"We're all gonna die," she said, sadly as she looked around at what was looking increasingly more like a coffin every second.

TO BE CONTINUED...in part two