Though he hadn’t admitted it to anyone, since getting back from Vegas, he’d been feeling a bit lost. Running into Ryan again had been awkward, though he no longer felt animosity. Truth be told, he hadn’t in a while, but thought that Ryan had wanted nothing to do with him, so he’d left him alone and moved on to Alyssa. Honestly, if anything, he just felt a little sad over the whole ordeal. Mostly for Ryan, who had lost his family and was struggling, it seemed. Nostalgia for the time they’d had together was strong lately, but he didn’t question that, since it only made sense.
He took a swig from a bottle of whiskey and tried not to think about it, though the more he tried not to, the more his mind wandered to thoughts of both Ryan and Alyssa, and the more he wanted to drink, just to drown it all out. ‘I should probably talk to someone’, he thought, but he wasn’t exactly comfortable with that.
He debated calling Kassie for a special kind of comfort, but decided against it. Instead, he put the bottle, now down to only a couple glasses worth (it had been half full to start), away in the cupboard he kept all his liquor, and called it a night.
~
Flipping through Heinrich’s journal was like falling into a rabbit hole and ending up in a twisted kind of Wonderland. It read conspiracy, yet Nick felt that there was a truth behind it all, one that was within reach, if a code could be cracked. Certainly, to any outsider, it would just be crazy ramblings of a madman, or perhaps some up-and-comer’s attempt at a story bible for some bizarre book or movie or show – it was Hollywood, after all.
The more he went back and forth through it, the more he felt fascinated, and came up with theories of his own. Reading between the lines to the best of his ability, he came to the conclusion that, perhaps Heinrich had been talking about a secret society. Secret societies were nothing new, and it seemed like everyone had heard of Skull and Bones at the very least. The Illuminati came to mind as well, of course, but this didn’t seem like that.
It seemed more like a Catholic thing, but even if they tended to be corrupt, to Nick it felt more like it was some kind of society that was mocking the church. It’s not that there was anything to indicate this in the journal, per se – just a feeling he had. Looking over his notes, the one thing he couldn’t place was the mention of Donovan, about him being right, and something about their brothers and sisters. That part, at least, he felt was more of a figurative, or chosen family, not unlike his brothers he left behind in the military, perhaps. Something bonded them together – but what was it? And what had Donovan been right about?
Closing the journal, he then flipped through his notes, jotting down anything else he could think of, before noting the time and leaving to hang out with Raiden and Kassie. He intended to ask them that night about hanging out with Donovan, though made a mental note to call or text Donovan the next day to get together about what he’d been able to make sense of.