'Well… My god.' I whimpered almost in pleasure. 'This is definitely a sight I would pay good money for.'

'You're telling me.' Melina whispered, taking a hold of my hand instinctively. I looked over to her and couldn't tell if she was crying or not. She probably was knowing her, she was much more of a technology freak than I was.

'You're l-letting the hot air out!' A quiet voice called from somewhere up ahead in the darkness. I could just about make out the shape of someone sat by another computer monitor at the other side of the room.

'Quiet, Frewer, I'm showing our guests around!' T-Bone laughed back. 'Follow me, darlings.'

Melina and I walked forward as T-Bone showed us around the large warehouse size room and towards the figure that had called out.

'Frewer, I'd like you to meet the girls I told you about. Girls. This is Frewer. Tobias Frewer. Forgive his ridiculous name but don't blame him for it- he didn't choose it afterall.'

'Hi.' The male was slouched over onto his desk with his head resting on his arms, smiling sweetly up at us. He looked fairly old but his behaviour and movement almost mimicked that of a child. He giggled when I turned my head to look at him from a side view and sat up. 'So… Did Ray show you around already?'

'Ray?' Melina mumbled. 'Who's that?'

'... That's me.' T-Bone sighed, stepping up to Tobias and gently banging his fist down onto the top of his head. 'T-Bone Grady is my "fixer name" or at least, it is when I'm doing stuff that Blume can very easily track. My real name is Raymond Kenney.'

I frowned. I was pretty sure I'd heard that name before, I'd definitely seen it floating around social media sites but a part of me thought I'd seen it somewhere else before. Maybe in a newspaper or something, I mean the guy was a murderer so it might've been there I read it a long time ago.

'Ray for short?' Melina ran her fingers through her hair and nodded. 'Okay cool. More importantly, where is the vigilante?'

'In the back, follow me. Clark, you're welcome to set up your gear if you want. There's a door in the back corner there that leads to a room, I threw a few mattresses down in there so you and Melina are welcome to use the room as your temporary accommodation, I guess.' T-Bone- or rather Raymond Kenney led Melina in the opposite direction and I heard a door open on the other end of the room.

'Welcome to the dream team.' Tobias chuckled after I just stood there for a few moments, not really sure where to go. 'If you have any questions just ask me?'

'... I do have a couple actually now- If you're not busy obviously.' I jumped over myself in awkwardness. I wasn't too good at social situations, in fact the whole idea of talking to someone I didn't know without the presence of someone I was comfortable with made me almost reconsider my two lattes.

'Go ahead~ Ask away~' The elder man all but sang.

'Well… I kinda just want to know who Raymond Kenney, Aiden Pearce and Tobias Frewer are.' I whispered. I didn't trust anything I read online so I guess asking one of the three men I was asking about was my best option. 'What can you tell me about them?'

'You mean personal details? I'm an open book. You can pretty much just tell my life story just by looking at me, or so I've been told anyhoo. Ray's different as he is pretty secretive. I don't know much about him other than his hacking abilities. People used to say that he was married but I don't agree. He doesn't seem like the type.'

'He looks pretty young though, maybe it's not too late.'

'Oh, he's a tired old dog now.' Tobias winked. lifting his head up from the table at last and resting his head on the back of his chair. 'He's got as much juice in him as a capri sun.'

'...' I laughed. 'Did you just zing a company that can't even hear you or know what you said?'

'So what if I did? In this lifestyle, you do what you want.' Tobias laughed again, holding his chest as he coughed and spluttered along side. 'Anyway, the vigilante you asked about too right? Well… No wife or kids, just a sister who has a kid.'

'Wait- Hold on.' I gulped, a joke forming in my head. Was I risky enough to say it? Would my terrible pun ruin a possibly forming friendship? 'Does he have a nephew or niece?'

'He has a nephew I think. Jackie or Jacko or the like.'

I took a deep breath in, mustering all my courage. '... Then surely he's not the vigilante, he's the vigil-uncle.'

…

Silence.

I was greeted by nothing but silence. Oh dear god, Clark you have made a grave mistake. I looked down at the floor hoping that something would swallow me up as I awkwardly stood there. A few moments passed and I felt the tension raining down on me for several seconds until Tobias suddenly screamed out.

'VIGIL-UNCLE! I didn't get it! I'm so sorry! That's so good!' He was in fits of giggles and laughter and I couldn't help but join in with him. Tobias was holding his stomach as he wheezed and snorted while I was struggling to keep myself upright.

The two of us must have been laughing for an eternity before I felt an arm snake around mine and tug me backwards as a low pitch voice grumbled. 'What the hell?'

'Clark, what are you doing?' Melina's familiar voice came from behind me, I looked and saw her arm holding me back while in her hand was a key.

Behind her was two figures, one I already knew was Grad- I mean Kenney while the other I didn't recognise. His hands were slung low in his pockets and he had a large hat on that covered his face in the dark room.

'She's so funny!' Tobias laughed. 'Tell the joke again! Tell the joke again!'

'... I just said that… If the vigilante has a nephew then surely he should be called the… Vigil-uncle.' Repeating it made it less funny to me but Tobias laughed just as hard again and Kenney actually joined in.

Melina pulled away from me and only looked at me with such disappointment in her eyes. She probably knew it was a terrible joke and that I was capable of so much more. The other man… I could already tell was not at all impressed.

'I had a nephew.' The man suddenly muttered. 'Let's get this straight from the start, shall we? I don't know you… You don't know me… Never mention my family or I will not hesitate to shoot you.'

The entire room was silent.

'No need to be a dick, Pearce. These girls are our allies, they're here to help.' Raymond stepped forward and draped his arm over the goddamn vigilante's shoulder.

I only really knew what the news told us about the vigilante but seeing that Blume controlled a lot of what news stations knew, maybe I should just throw all my original knowledge of these three men out the window and let them teach me for themselves.

'Whatever, Kenney.' The vigilante grunted, taking his phone from his pocket and scrolling through it. 'If you ask me, you're making a big mistake here, bringing children into this operation.'

'Good thing I didn't ask you then, go sulk someplace else.' Kenney grunted back to him and removed his arm. He then moved over to Tobias and laid a hand down onto the male's head who had placed it back down during the last few moments.

Pearce groaned but immediately began walking the direction he had come from. His walk was limped and he walked at a very slow pace until he reached the other end of the large dark underground room and disappeared through an open door.

'... So Frewer, take us all through what you've got so far.' Kenney patted his hand down and stepped away as Tobias rose up to his feet and walked over to the edge of a large monitor and switched it on.

A large computer screen, bigger than a usual flat screen TV, shined to life with a range of tabs open across it. Tobias returned back to where he was sitting originally and began to play around with his computer screen which simultaneously altered the larger monitors screen.

'... Well… Blume only really has one b-big base of operations for the moment, they closed down all their original sites in order to totally cleanse their systems of hackers and fixers like us. Their main site is all the way up in the-the Loop around the coastal line. They do have a few small sites but they're hard to find-'

'Like hard as balls, hard.' Raymond interrupted. 'I almost lost my left testicle trying to break into one joint and all it turned out to be was some petty off site surveillance place that only showed the outer structure of their main building.'

'We're thinking that all these other sites are also useless to us. What we need is in the main base itself.' Frewer mumbled. 'Their system is all new, there's no more Kenney-edition base code and there's no simple security systems to bypass.'

'So… What? You can't get in?' Melina mumbled crossing her arms.

'Not from here.' Raymond muttered.

'If we were able to access the networks computer, we may be able to slip past the security unnoticed but the company upped its security and if any one of us step anywhere within 500 metres of that place they'll gun us down given the chance.' Tobias mumbled. 'It shouldn't be difficult, create a bug from here take it to the main computer, plug it in, upload it and we can just weave the bug through from here but it needs to be uploaded directly.'

'That's where the two of you come in.' Raymond mumbled. 'Melina, you need to be the one to create this bug. It needs to be small and fast, it's vital that we get what we need and out before Blume even know we're there otherwise they might order an open season for all those people on the list.'

'... How do you even know this list exists?' I mumbled. 'Who sold Blume out?'

'We were approached by an anonymous source who sent us a short snip of the list. We researched into it ourselves and found that Blume was hiring fixers, sending them about 5 names of people they had to knock off with cash sums for rewards. The list is the entire collection of names that have thus far been given to any fixer going.' Ray leaned over Tobias' back and began tapping a few keys until a picture flashed across the screen.

'Annabelle York. Josh Martin. Ryan Court. Tegan Pope. Scott Flash...' Melina read aloud. 'They don't seem worth very much. I mean, ten grand is a lot of money to me but to fixers I don't see how they're doing this for so little money.'

'We're assuming that better fixers are being given better names. Prove your worth, get the better jobs.' Tobias elbowed Ray out of his personal space gently and removed the picture from the screen.

'What would you like me to do?'

'Well, this is where I start to worry if you're going to run away screaming.' Ray chuckled awkwardly. 'Obviously, since none of us can go anywhere near the building, we can't be the ones to upload Melina's bug. Plus, you learnt the same base code that Melina knows so it'll be a lot easier for you to hack and run.'

'You want me- 23 year old, socially inept, paranoid coward- to go into the most heavily secured company's main base of operations and upload a bug which will in turn lead to the biggest scandal of the century being released. Is that what I'm hearing?' I sighed.

How did I not see this coming? I'm only good for one thing and that's for being replaceable.

'We'll be with you through the whole thing through cameras and video down your ears.' Frewer reassured me. Although it was dark, I could tell that he was looking at me with heavy sympathy. This was a guy who hated this lifestyle but knew it was his only choice, this was a man that knew that sending me into that building would mean I would have the same fate as him.

Yet we all knew that this was our only chance if we wanted to save these people.

'When the bug is uploaded and it works- then what?' I whispered, I ran my fingers through my thick brown hair before grabbing it in a bunch and tying it in a loose bun.

'We recieve the list, we release it to the press and then we destroy it for good.' Raymond growled. 'We're taking ctOS down for good this time.'