Preston escorted me to the payphone, much to Rob's dismay. He showed me the trick to using it without paying for it and then left (back to his unofficial boyfriend I presumed). I tapped the number into the keypad carefully.

"Hello. Your call to SOUL LABORATORIES has been forwarded to an automatic..."

Straight to voicemail. I hung up. At least I had some information about V now: they worked at a place called SOUL Laboratories.

I turned around, starting to walk back, when someone running at a very high speed crashed into me. Neither of us fell down, but the person running had halted in their tracks.

"Oh! Excuse me, sorry, I'm just-" He paused. "PETEY?"

"Choco?" I asked, perplexed. Choco stumbled back in surprise.

"Oh...my god..." Choco was breathing hard. "Thank fleep you're okay. My sixth sense...it started going off like crazy and all I knew was that something bad happened and it involved you."

"Oh," I said quietly. "You didn't have to come all the way back here for me..."

"Are you JOKING?!" Choco yelled. "Of course I did! Anything bad happening that involves you is bound to be worth a trip back to Genesis, especially with Nooch and Crow's attacks and..."

I held up my hands signaling for him to stop talking. "I get it. While you're here, can I ask a question?"

"You just did," Choco joked.

I sighed. "Aaaaanyway, do you know what SOUL Laboratories is?"

"Never heard of it," Choco said. "It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel."

"Yeah..." I said, "...it really does. But as far as I know, it's a real place, and someone called 'V' works there."

"Someone called 'V'?" Choco asked. "How do you know them?"

"They sent me a letter regarding Nooch," I explained. "You see, I kind of, did something...questionable."

Choco paused and crossed his arms like an angry, passive-aggressive mother. "Please explain."

I exhaled slowly, running my fingers through my hair. "Come back to HQ with me and I'll tell you everything."

~~~

I lead Choco up to my room and began to explain the situation. "...I ripped out the part that controlled his sight, hearing, and government information, and I crushed it to bits..."

"YOU WHAT?!" Choco exclaimed.

"...I'm not done yet," I interjected. "And then I hooked up his 'brain', I guess you could call it, to Lachlan's laptop and started communicating with him through text. It worked, but..."

I paused.

"But? But what?" Choco said worriedly.

"...but he didn't want to continue to exist if he would only be able to communicate like that. He said that he didn't like the dark and...then he shut himself off."

"He shut himself off?" Choco seemed surprised. "That's a first."

"Preston said the same thing!" I exclaimed. "But now...I'm worried I ruined everything."

"And?" Choco asked.

"And? There's no 'and' anything. That's the end of the story."

"What about the letter you got?"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter from V. I handed it to Choco for him to read.

He scanned over it quickly, quicker than I could have read it. Then he looked up at me with surprise. "What's the problem? Did you call them?"

"It went straight to voicemail," I explained. "The number was for a place called SOUL Laboratories, like I was saying earlier. I don't know if I should call again, or wait and see if they send another letter, or what."

"I'd wait," Choco said. I nodded.

"How're things going back at Balamb?" I asked.

"Fine," Choco sighed. "This clumsy kid named Artemis decided to kiss someone...someone with the fever...and now he's quarantined. We can't let that crap spread through our camp."

The name Artemis was very familiar to me. "What's his last name...?"

"Luke. Artemis Luke," Choco said. "Why do you ask?"

"Holy shit," I said, "I saved that kid from being killed in a PvP match. It's his fault that my hands ended up injured. Glad to see my efforts were worth it," the last bit was slightly sarcastic.

"You did?!" Choco exclaimed. "I didn't even know he'd been in a PvP match! I didn't even know he'd been captured!"

"Captured?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah, I haven't explained that to you yet..." Choco trailed off. "The PvP system is...kind of...messed up. Members of Crow tend to be high-up on most wanted lists, so to humiliate them even further before they get killed, they're put in PvP matches after they're arrested. Often, they're hilariously outnumbered or outmatched. Mitchell Hughes has far too much Crow blood on his hands."

"That son of a bitch," I said. "I'd like to face off with him again, with a proper weapon this time. Give him a piece of my mind."

"Not a good idea," Choco said, "now that you're a member of Crow, I mean. Also, remind me to yell at Artemis later."

"Will do," I said. "Just out of curiosity, what PvPers are there other than Mitch?"

"Jerome's the other really famous one," Choco replied. "They often do matches together. It's kinda rare to see them fighting alone."

"So I was lucky, then?" I asked.

"Yeah," Choco nodded.

The conversation paused awkwardly. I reached into my pocket and lightly held onto Choco's note. I suspected I knew who it had been written to and why it had been scrapped.

"How're things between you and Kenny?" I asked abruptly. "You two seem pretty close."

"He was the first one other than myself that I met who had a necklace," Choco explained. "So, yeah, we're close."

"But he's not a member of Crow."

"He doesn't agree with it," Choco sighed, "the vandalism and stuff, I mean. He's not on the government's side, at all, but..."

"What's so bad about the government, anyway?" I asked. Choco looked dumbfounded.

"What's so wrong with the..." he laughed. "I can't blame you, I guess, because of the amnesia and all, but everything is wrong with the government."

"Explain."

"In order to do anything, and I mean nearly anything, you need a permit. You need a permit to own a computer, to make phone calls, to have money in your possession, to have a job, to buy food, to live, basically. And each permit consists of filling out about five-hundred sheets of paperwork, so a lot of people end up doing things illegally because who has the time to fill out that much paperwork? And here's the thing: if you are caught doing something without a permit, it's straight to jail for you. No trial, no nothing. However, if you're caught doing something much worse than that, like selling drugs or murdering someone or whatever, you actually get a fair trial and, in most cases, no jail time."

"That's fucked up," I commented.

"Really? Ya think so? So does every member of Crow. It's why I created Crow, it's why we vandalize government buildings and protest against their stupid policies, and it's why we want our name to be known despite the fact that we're all wanted criminals. It's a tough job."

"How many members of Crow are there, worldwide?"

"I don't know. I don't count. But in Genesis alone, there are over two-hundred."

"What's the population of Genesis, for comparison?"

"Sixty-thousand something. So two-hundred is a small percentage, but it's still a lot."

"How did you establish..."

Choco cut me off rudely. "You're just full of questions, aren't you? Well, let me ask you a question for a change..."

He paused, and smiled slyly. "Are you in love with a freaking robot, Petey?"

I got incredibly defensive. I was also probably blushing like mad, but I was too distracted to notice. "NO! I mean, maybe. I mean, he's a robot why would I..."

"Face it. You are in love with a robot."

I buried my face in my hands, embarrassed. Choco teased me about it for the rest of the day.

~~~

It's not Vikk. I'll reveal who it really is in part 20. Until then, I'll leave you with this:

This person was involved in both HTM and H2M, but they do not have a YouTube channel.

Ciao!