The hospital and phone call

Mark got out of his truck, without parking it, but not leaving it in a place not letting others pass.

As he joined the crowd, he started hearing them speaking about what could have happened. Even if they couldn’t see who was under the sheet on the stretcher, they knew that they could be only one person, since only Tam and his father lived in that house. Also, Tam’s body was smaller.

Mark doubted that people knew of what happened to Tam since it park was outside the town, but he started hearing some bizarre rumors.

The story that most seemed to go with, was that Tam had run away since he wasn’t around and that his father had a heart attack after reading the goodbye note Tam left behind.

Of course, there was no note, but the rumors and assumptions seemed to get crazy.

“Oh, Mr. Henderson. You are here. You must know what happened here. Did Tam really run away with his secret high school crush? “

Mark looked at the woman who talked to him, and he was familiar with her. She was the person to whom you least wanted to tell your secrets at, and the first person to tell something if you wanted for everyone to learn.

“Be respectful of the ones whose lives are in danger for once in your life. “Mark told her.

He never liked the woman, as she knew she had spread false rumors many times, including about him. At that moment, he wished his target was to be someone like her, but he got his mind back to the task at hand.

The ambulance soon left the hospital, and Mark couldn’t tell if he was alive, but he probably wasn’t since they had him covered. Still, he went back to his truck and followed the ambulance to the hospital.

This time, since he didn’t have  Truck-kun’s help, it took him more time to find a place to park his truck. When he found a suitable location, he went to the hospital and to the front counter.

“Excuse me, may I ask about a recent patient of your facility? “

The nurse looked at Mark with some suspicion in her eyes.

“It depends. Is it a relative of yours?“ she asked him.

“No, just a good friend. He was just brought to the ambulance, but I know that he had some bad news about his son just the other day, so I am worried that the worst happened. “

The nurse still looked at him and then started typing something on the keyboard nearby.

“Name of the patient?”

“Ashton Parker. “

The nurse typed the name to find results in their system. Then, after reading for a bit, she turned towards Mark, with somewhat apparent sadness in her eyes.

“I am sorry to inform you, but your friend had been officially reported deceased just recently.“

Mark had thought that things could get to this point, but he hoped it would have time to prevent them. But he had underestimated how bad the health of Ashton was with his sickness, and he thought he had more time to help him.

“Thank you for telling me. I  know that this isn’t usually a piece of information you can tell to a  non-relative, but I appreciate your help,” Mark said to the nurse.

“Do you mind then giving us a contact number to inform his close relatives? We have no such number on our system. “

“His son was the only relative he had. But he was recently in an accident that took his life. “

The nurse looked back at the monitor, reading some more. There probably was a report of the reason he got at the hospital last night. Mark wondered why the doctors had allowed him to leave this morning as if they hadn’t done so things could be different.

Mark gave the nurse the name he remembered of a long relative of Ashton, but they were leaving far from here. Since he couldn’t do anything else to help the situation, he left the establishment.

As he got to his truck, he started hearing some ringing from one of his pockets. It was the phone that his Inspector gave him just a few hours ago.

He looked on the screen, and on it had a familiar collection of letters and numbers. It was the same letters and numbers as on his truck plate.

He answered the call right away.

[Finally, I made a connection.]

It was the voice of Truck-kun, but this time he actually heard it with his ears and not on his mind.

“I thought we couldn’t speak until the System if back ONLINE.“

[We can’t the usual way, but I  can make a call. It is troublesome, though. So have you progressed in  the investigation, or are you just sitting on your ass while I am gone?]

Mark started telling him about everything he learned about Ray and Kura and what happened to Tam’s father.

[Well, when you make an omelet,  you need to break some eggs. So about our current targets, how do we progress? You have a free day, so you better use it wisely.]

Mark ignored the first comment of Truck-kun as he started telling him what he had thought their plan could be. There were a few details he still needed to investigate, but a  plan had formed in his mind already.

“What about the TruckCoins? It isn’t a coincidence that they got more accessible as many as I used, right? “

[You are on the right track. Since the STORE isn’t part of the human market, what you use there gets carried elsewhere, and most times, it will become public for people to find.  That is also why using it right away or in enormous quantity isn’t the best plan. If it becomes too easy for them to get it, it will affect the  price with real money, that you want that much.]

Mark understood a bit what  Truck-kun was talking about. Of course, he had to be careful when and how much he could use, but using them also could help him manipulate the market.

But doing so would need to have good timing or could have the opposite effect.

Mark was never good with this kind of thing, but he knew a person who was —- his first target, Tam. But since Tam couldn’t help him, he had to do the next best thing to get the TAM’S MIND Driver Upgrade.

Hopefully, he didn’t need to buy it using his TruckCoins, but after completing the next assignment,  he could use the free point he would get from completing the assignment.

So Mark started driving but not heading towards his house, but towards the house of a friend of his.

It was the same person that gave him WonderCorp’s products to test. He was part of the technicians of theirs and wanted to learn more about the friend of Maria.

He was a grandfather over everything else, after all.