Before exiting their vehicle, Cindy and Josh doubled checked that they were at the right place and sure enough the address the school had given them, was the Orphanage.The Orphanage was a large single floor building. When the two of them entered the front gate, they were greeted with a bunch of kids between the ages of 5 and 10, who outside playing.
"Ah, it"s an Adult." One of the little girls pointed. "Someone go call Claire, we have visitors."
"Nice to meet you, little girl," Josh said as he bent down to match the kid"s eye level. "Were looking for a boy named Dan, does he live here?"
"You hear to see big brother?" The girl said. "are you going to take him away." Suddenly the girl"s smile had turned into a frown.
"No don"t worry about that, we just here to ask him some questions."
Just then tall women in her mid-twenties named Claire came out from the building.
"Come on kids play"s times over. it"s time for dinner let"s go head inside."
"Yay!" the kids cheered and immediately started running indoors.
Josh and Cindy had quickly explained that they had come from Tick and they were here for an interview because of Dan.
"Oh, you"re in luck he literally just came back."
Claire started to lead the way and the three of them went inside the orphanage. There were broken toys scattered everywhere and all of the equipment looked worn down.
"Sorry about the mess, I"m the only one working here at the moment."
"Can"t you get any help, that"s a lot of people for one person," Cindy said.
"Unfortunately, the government cut our public funding a long time ago. Originally, they wanted to close this place down but I was an orphan here myself. So when they needed help, I took up the mantle."
"It can"t be cheap to feed everyone, how do you get the money, what about school supplies?"
"One of the kids who used to be an orphan here regularly sends us checks, that gives us just enough to keep going." Claire said, "Now that I think about it, Dan and that person were really close."
Finally, they had arrived just outside of Dan"s room. Claire gave a knock before opening the door. The room was small it was just big enough to fit a desk and a single bed. Dan was currently in the middle of getting changed into his school uniform and when they opened the door, Dan had just taken his top off.
"Sorry Dan!" Claire said with her face all red and she immediately shut the door.
"I think I"m going to head off, Dan will let you know when he"s ready," Claire said as she quickly scurried away.
"Did you see the boy"s body?" Cindy asked.
"I didn"t know you were interested in kids."
Cindy"s cheeks started to burn.
"No! I didn"t mean it in that way. For a 16-year-old his body was in prime shape. I don"t know many 16-year-olds who look like that."
Just then Dan opened the door and invited the two inside.
They asked Dan similar questions to Ashley and found out that Dan had joined many clubs before eventually joining the VSW club. It also explained why Dan was physically in top condition. The fact that Dan always outperformed everyone in physical sports made Josh think why the sudden change to a game.
"Dan, what made you want to play VSW?"
"Oh, that"s an easy one, it was actually because of my teammate Novis."
Novis again Josh thought.
"I grew bored with being the best at all these sports and one day when I spotted Novis, I knew he was someone special. Someone who could give me real compet.i.tion. The only thing I didn"t expect was he was better than me in every single aspect."
Cindy couldn"t believe what Dan was saying. She had done research into Dan and found out he wasn"t just good at other sports, he was exceptional. Many other schools wanted to hijack Dan and add them onto their team but Dan refused each and every one of them.
But when Cindy looked at the files for Novis, he had never even joined a club before the VSW club, not only that but it was twice now that Novis was getting praise from his two teammates.
"What did you mean he was better than you?" Cindy asked.
"Let"s just say he does things that are impossible."
After ending the interview, Josh and Cindy waved goodbye to the kids and headed back into their car. Cindy could see that Josh had a concerned look on his face.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Don"t you think it"s strange that the Montem team is made up of complete newbies. VSW is the most popular game in the world right now and every school usually has at least around 50 members. I looked at last year files and the only member that is still on the team from last year is Alex. Don"t you think it"s a little strange?"
"Where do you want to go next then?"
"Before we find out about this Novis person I think it"s best if we get some answers, why don"t we head to the team captains house next, Alex."
After driving around town for a while they suddenly entered a nicer part of town. These houses were a lot larger than regular houses but not big enough to be called mansions.
The two of them stopped just outside one of the nicer houses which had a gate outside leading up to it. Josh pressed the buzzer by the side and waited for an answer.
"h.e.l.lo, how can I help?" A woman"s voice said on the speaker.
"Hi their mam, we"re here form Tick media and wanted to ask your son Alex a few questions before his upcoming match in the VSW tournament."
"Are you people talking about that silly game again! I already informed the school that my son shall be taking part in no such thing and now they"re sending people to my house to do interviews. Now if you would kindly turn back around and leave that would be greatly appreciated."
"What do we do now?" Cindy asked.
Just then Josh spotted a young boy climbing out of his bedroom window.
"I think we can wait."