xp_logs | Doug and Mark researching

Mark comes to St. Vincent's to visit Angie and go over some research with Doug.

Mark set a Styrofoam cup of coffee down on the nightstand by Marie-Ange's bed and slowly sipped his own. It was awful, but Doug had been in the hospital for hours and had barely moved. At the very least he needed some caffeine. "No change?" he asked, but it was rhetorical.

"None." Doug cleared his throat and stretched his legs, both having seen little use in the shift he'd sat by Marie-Ange's side. Any time he hadn't been working or meeting with other people from Snow Valley, he'd been ensconced firmly in St. Vincent's. He'd spent more than one night dozing fitfully while sitting in the chair, and the caffeine would stave off lack of sleep for at least a bit longer. He reached thankfully for the cup. He nodded at the stack of printouts folded under Mark's arm, grateful for the distraction. "What've we got?" he asked.

"Lots of money moving from person to person, and I'm not one of them." Mark offered the papers to Doug and then pulled up a seat next to him. He spared a glance at Marie-Ange's unconscious form before forcing himself to tear his eyes away and turn to Doug. "The names of some of these companies sounded familiar, so I Googled them. 'Private defense companies.'" He snorted.

"Let's see if I can play Karnak the Magnificent," Doug said dryly as he placed one of the printouts to his forehead. "Is one of the names 'Blackwater'?"

"One of the many names. And one of the only ones who actually come up on Google. There are half a dozen that no one's ever heard of before." Mark frowned and reached over Doug to rifle through the papers until he found the one he was looking for. "Twenty bucks say the founders are escaped war criminals from Europe and Africa."

"What, do I -look- like I want to just give you twenty bucks? If you want drinks on my nickel you should just say so." The banter was a familiar part of doing research with Mark. Doug clung to the normalcy of it, rather than fixating on the abnormality of their location.

Mark raised his coffee in mock salute, more than happy to play along. "I can get plenty of free drinks on my own, thanks. But I'm flattered all the same." He scanned over the sheet he'd taken and then handed it back with a sigh. "These guys are moving in under the pretense of getting ready to help with any potential evacuation or security breaches if people get too angry."

"I assume that by using the word 'pretense', you think that they're going there for a different reason?" Doug sipped his coffee and shuffled the papers around the table in an attempt to somehow find more room on it to spread the information out. "I agree, but we need to have information to back that up."

"That's what 'pretense' means. Look, you don't hire more than one security company to help with what's not even supposed to be a state of emergency. And if you do, then you don't hire ones whose sole purpose is to profit off war. Fuck, even Blackwater manages some public facade of legitimacy."

"Look, I'm not disagreeing with you. Judging from what we've got here, Blackwater are the nicest of the bunch. But we need to be able to back our suspicions up with something other than 'hey, these are really bad people coming to town'." Doug flipped through a stack of printouts again, looking for more solid information.

Mark crossed one leg over the other and tried to get comfortable in his chair. It was a losing battle. "I wasn't able to find where the money came from, only where it went. Reckon that's something more up your alley. But I've talked to some people I know down there and asked them to keep their eyes open and tell me if they notice anything suspicious."

"Good enough. I'll see what I can dig up when I get back to the office," Doug told him, putting the papers back together in a neat pile.

"Cool." They sat in silence for a moment, and Mark finished his coffee. "I'll stay if you wanna head back," he added softly. "I'll keep her company."

As loath as Doug was to leave his girlfriend's side, he gathered the pile of papers with a nod. "I should probably get on this. Could be important." He stretched as he stood, trying to get the kinks out. "Thanks, man," he told Mark.

Mark nodded and reclined in his seat. A minute after Doug closed the door, he smiled. "I know you can't hear me, Angie, and you'll kill me for this, but I heard the best gossip and I have to tell you now . . ."