You wake up in the back of a van and only now do you realise that you must have passed out as you tried to run from the men in suits.
Around you the van rattles and quakes. The inside is barren metal and stinks of oil. You're thrown against the side of the van as it passes over a pot hole in the room and now you realise that you're aching all over from where that has happened before. On the plus side though, your head is filled with a blessed silence that you never thought you'd hear again. The pain that was filling your mind has faded to no more than a vague murmur.
Slowly, you push yourself up until your kneeling on the quaking floor and look around. You're alone in the stripped out the back of the van. Behind you the back doors of the vehicle are barely visible as a crack running from floor to low ceiling. There are no handles. In front of you a narrow hatch would have let you see into the driver's compartment if it wasn't closed.
You move, cautiously, and wedge yourself into one corner of the compartment, trying to stop yourself being thrown from side to side by the van's motion. For the first time since this whole crazy business began you have a few minutes to think.
You've got caught up in something. Something big. You're fifteen, you're not naive or ignorant. You know you're in trouble and you have a shrewd idea that these men in suits are not the kind of people you want to get to know better. You've never believed in the 'Men in Black' that conspiracy theorists have been talking about for decades and now you've been kidnapped by them.
Do you believe the things that Kevin and Adam have been trying to tell you? It's too early to be sure. You cant deny though that the headaches you've been having have been worrying you and Kevin and the others seemed to be able to help. They're not here now though and that confuses you because your mind is still quiet. You look around again, half hoping that somehow you've just missed noticing one of the others. You haven't.
You did fail to notice something else though. You realise that you're very warm. You're hot despite the cold metal that you're leaning against. You look down and realise that you're wearing a thick waistcoat. It's about the size and shape of the flak jackets that you've seen war reporters wearing on TV but you know that it's not quite that. Glinting through the thin fabric covering, you can see circuit boards and complex electronic components and you realise that the thing is generating a lot of waste heat.
Now you're even more confused. The waistcoat is doing something, and judging from the complexity of the circuits you can see it's something complicated. Could this be the thing that's stopping the headache from incapacitating you? Or is just some kind of tracking device to stop you escaping? Would you be better off without it? It's a difficult question but as the van draws to a halt you know that you might not have another chance to do something about it.
Do you:
a) Try to take the waistcoat off?
b) Leave the waistcoat on and see what happens next?
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