** NICK **
I rubbed at my eyes as the forum list populated on the screen. There were so many threads to choose from, and I could feel a headache coming on as I struggled to read all of the titles as fast as possible. A counter in the top right corner of the screen indicated that bsbcrazies.net had over five thousand members. It was going to be next to impossible to find Dan’s profile.
“We need to do a profile search.” Brian took the words out of my mouth as he jabbed at the profiles tab. “Let’s see if we can narrow it down by gender. I’m willing to bet that there aren’t too many guys.”
AJ nodded in approval and clicked on the profiles tab. Sure enough, a search window appeared that would allow us to narrow down the choices by gender. It took a few seconds for the page to re-load and, when it did, we were faced with a list of only seventy-two usernames.
“Try searching for ‘Dan’.” I suggested. “I highly doubt that he’s going to have a cutesy username involving flowers and butterflies.”
“Flowers and butterflies?” AJ gave me a rather disparaging look. “Every single one of our female fans would kick you in the balls for that comment.”
“You know what I mean.” I muttered, watching as AJ’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Guys aren’t very creative. That’s all that I was trying to say.”
AJ shook his head. “And you wonder why people think you’re slow.”
“We’ve got four usernames involving the word ‘Dan’.” Brian announced. He gave me and AJ a warning look before returning his eyes to the screen. “How much do you wanna bet that the guy we’re looking for is: ‘dan_n_nick_r1’?”
AJ clicked on the profile link and, almost immediately, I found myself staring at an image of a man who looked disturbingly like me. Apparently, finding Dan’s profile wasn’t going to be very difficult after all. I had seen Dan in person a few times and I knew that the physical resemblance was uncanny, but the picture that I was staring at now was beyond surprising; it was downright shocking. It was like looking in a mirror. No wonder everyone had mistaken him for me.
“Jesus Christ …” AJ clicked on a thread that Dan had started entitled ‘My Transformation’. He visibly recoiled as the page appeared on the screen.
I couldn’t bring myself to speak as I looked at the before and after picture that Dan had posted. Even before all of his surgeries, Dan had looked like a cross between me and Aaron. I could easily imagine people coming up to him and telling him that he looked just like me. The after picture was the image that churned my stomach. Dan had altered his nose, his eyebrows, his jaw line, and his teeth. He had replicated my tattoos, my haircut, and my facial hair. He had mimicked my style of clothing, and he had obviously put in more than a few hours at the gym in order to duplicate my physical physique. The poor guy must have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. But why had he done it? Had he thought that looking like me would somehow make his life better?
“This is fucking creepy.” Brian breathed. “He’s you, Nick.”
I shuddered at Brian’s choice of words. This man wasn’t me, but he had wanted to be me. He had wanted to be me so badly that he had ended up getting himself killed in the process. I forced myself to look away from the unsettling pictures and began to run my eyes down the list of people who had commented. The sick feeling in my stomach was intensifying. Literally hundreds of users had left comments. It seemed as though Dan had acquired quite a following. The thread had a total of six hundred pages that contained God knows how many separate discussions. There was no way that we were going to be able to narrow down a list of potential suspects.
“This is – this is – this isn’t going to work.” AJ stammered. “Look at how many people have left comments. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to figure this out! What were we thinking? We’re not the police! We can’t do this!”
As much as I agreed with AJ, I just couldn’t bring myself to voice my doubts out loud. I felt as though we had no choice. In my mind, if we gave up, Howie and Kevin were as good as dead.
“Maybe someone will stand out if we read through some of the comments.” Brian suggested. “We can start by seeing who has commented the most.”
“There are six hundred pages of comments!” AJ shouted. He stood up from the couch and roughly shoved the coffee table out of the way. The tears were already visible in his eyes as he began to angrily pace back and forth across the family room. “We’re fooling ourselves and both of you know that!”
I caught Brian’s eye across the empty space that AJ had created by standing up. I could tell just by looking at him that he knew that our efforts were fruitless. No matter how hard we tried, we were never going to be able to find the un-sub by looking at online profiles.
The despair began to set in as I watched Brian’s optimism vanish and AJ’s anger escalate. I felt like crying again. The tears were already prickling my eyes, but I blinked them away. I couldn’t keep falling into Brian’s arms and sobbing like a child. I had to save Howie and Kevin.
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” I demanded. “We can’t just sit here and wait for the news that Kevin and Howie are dead! We have to help them!”
“I fucking know that, Nick!” AJ roared. He stopped pacing and turned to face me. “I know that the police are doing jack shit at the moment! I know that we can’t just sit around and wait for them to solve the problem for us. I also know that the three of us don’t know what the fuck we’re doing! We aren’t behaviour analysts, we don’t have top of the line computers or surveillance equipment, and we don’t have any weapons. All the three of us have is a shitty laptop and a pair of thick-headed security guards watching us from across the street!”
I jumped up from my place on the couch and joined AJ in the middle of the family room. The tears were already streaming down my face, but I had the benefit of being taller and I used my height to my advantage as I screamed back at him. “We have each other! I’m tired of hearing you say that we can’t do anything. We have to do something, AJ!”
“You were just crying to Brian that you didn’t want to fight.” AJ countered. The tears were leaking out of his eyes as he took a step forward and stared defiantly up into my face. “How come it’s okay for you to say that you want to give up, but it’s not okay for me to say that I’m scared? Why is everything always acceptable when it comes out of your mouth? Why is everyone always so willing to jump in and give you a hug when they’re not willing to do the same thing for me?”
“This isn’t about you or me!” I screamed. “This is about Howie and Kevin!”
“It’s always about you, Nick!” AJ was shouting again, the tears running faster down his face. “This whole thing started off being about you. We thought that you were dead, remember? We all came together because of you. We’re in this mess because of you!”
I stumbled backwards at AJ’s words. I wished that he had punched me in the face; it would have caused me far less pain. I knew that I was to blame, but hearing AJ say the words made it real. I was the reason that we were being hunted. I was responsible for everyone else’s suffering.
“I know that!” I was yelling at the top of my lungs, my body shaking with the effort of trying to scream and cry at the same time. “I know that I’m to blame! I fucked up just like I always do!”
AJ was staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. He was breathing heavily and the tears were dripping off of his chin and leaving wet trails down the front of his t-shirt. His face contorted in regret and a fresh wave of tears began to slide down his cheeks. “Shit. I didn’t mean that ...”
“Don’t – don’t come near me.” I put my hands out in front of me and took another step backwards as AJ moved forward. “I know how you feel. I know that you wish that I hadn’t come back. As far as you’re concerned, everyone would be better off if I was dead. You and Brian would have each other. Both of you would have been just fine.”
AJ continued to move forward. He curled his fingers around my wrist and tried to pull me towards him. “Nick, I’m just upset ...”
“Get off!”
I shoved AJ backwards with so much force that he hit the ground before he even had time to react. A wave of remorse washed over me as I watched AJ fall to the floor, but it was quickly replaced by a blanket of self-pity. The whole situation was entirely my fault and everyone hated me because of it.
AJ recovered quickly. He was back on his feet in record speed, lunging at me with his arms outstretched; his face a mixture of anger and intense betrayal. Thankfully, Brian was on him before I even had a chance to take another step backwards.
Brian’s arms locked around AJ’s waist and the two of them fell to the floor. I watched in horror as the two of them wrestled on the ground. My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t do anything more than watch the mess that I had created.
The last time that any of us had gotten into a physical fight was back in 2006. Strangely enough, Brian had been involved in that altercation as well. I had been flying high on some drug, and I had taken a swing at him after a show for a reason that I now couldn’t even remember. He had easily overpowered me that night; sending me careening into a wall in the dressing room before Howie had come running to my rescue.
Unfortunately for Brian, he wasn’t going to win this fight. AJ slammed Brian against the hardwood floor before sitting on his stomach and pinning his arms at his sides. I watched as the two of them stared at each other, both of them panting from the exertion of trying to control the other.
“Hit me, if you want.” Brian challenged. “Is that what we’re doing now? Fighting each other? Don’t you think that we’ve hurt each other enough?”
AJ released his grip on Brian’s arms and slid off of his torso. He sat down roughly on the floor and continued to stare at Brian in surprise. “I don’t want to hit you. Do you really think that I would be capable of doing something like that?”
I took a few tentative steps forward and sank down onto the floor next to AJ. Brian was still lying on his back and he made no move to right himself as I snaked one of my arms around AJ’s shoulders. “Nobody actually thought that you were going to hit him.”
AJ pulled his eyes away from Brian and centred his gaze on my face. “I didn’t mean what I said Nick; about this all being your fault. You know how I get when I feel like I’m losing control. I just went through this whole situation with you and now I’m going through it all over again with Howie and Kevin. We don’t know where they are or if they’re okay. I hate the feeling of not knowing. I hate being helpless.”
“It’s okay.” I squeezed AJ’s shoulder in reassurance. It felt strange to be the one offering comfort as opposed to the one receiving it.
“How is it okay?” AJ whispered. “I was hurling insults at you and hurling punches at Brian. That’s not okay.”
“This is hard for all of us.” I struggled to find the words that I wanted to use. I had never been very good at articulating myself properly. “Like Brian told me earlier, we have to do this together. If one of us gives up, we’re all as good as dead. We can’t keep letting our emotions rule our behaviour.”
AJ wiped the remaining tears from his face and offered me a sarcastic smile. “Since when did you become Kevin?”
“Oh, God!” Brian groaned as he pulled himself into a sitting position. “We don’t need another Kevin!”
I pulled my arm away from AJ’s shoulder and laughed softly at Brian’s comment. The three of us seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on the ground and crying. This was definitely not the way that we should be spending our time if we were really going to get serious about trying to help Howie and Kevin.
I manoeuvred myself so that I was able to reach the coffee table that AJ had shoved into the middle of the room and retrieved the laptop. I placed it on the floor in the centre of the three of us and stared at the screen. I still felt that the clue to the un-sub’s identity was somewhere in the forums of bsbcrazies.net.
The page refreshed to the home screen, and I could feel my heart rate increase as I noticed the intense amount of activity that was now taking place on the site. According to the counter, there were currently two thousand users logged in and new threads were popping up at rapid speed.
“Guys ...” I motioned for AJ and Brian to lean in as I clinked on the link to bring up the most recent posts. “...something big is going on.”
I selected the newest forum thread and held my breath as the screen loaded. The title of the thread was ominously entitled: ‘Creepy Video’. I let out my breath in a slow stream as I read the original post: ‘OMG! Have you guys seen this?? It’s all you can access when you go to the boys’ official site! Do you think it’s real or some kind of a hoax?? There’s been no news about the guys for DAYS now! So worried!!’
“Click on the link!” AJ was practically sitting on top of me to get a better view of the screen. Our recent fight was already nothing more than a distant memory. That was the good thing about arguing with AJ; he was quick to forgive and forget.
“What the ...” I couldn’t even bring myself to continue speaking as I stared at the screen.
The link had brought us to our official website. The opening screen had been replaced with what appeared to be a live video-feed. Howie and Kevin were in the video; sitting on the ground in an empty room. The two of them looked ragged and neither one of them was speaking. They were both just staring off into space, looking helpless.
“No.” AJ, for all intents and purposes, was now officially in my lap. His facial hair was tickling my cheek as we both leaned in to look at the screen. “No, no, no, no, no!”
“I can’t navigate away from the video.” I banged needlessly at the keyboard to emphasise my point. “It’s taken over the entire site.”
“I’m gonna be sick!” Brian made the announcement as he hauled himself to his feet. He used my shoulder as leverage as he pushed past me and AJ, and his feet thudded on the tiles as he took off down the hallway.
AJ and I locked eyes as the bathroom door slammed shut. We stared at each other in silence for several seconds before returning our eyes to the video. Kevin and Howie were talking to each other now. There was no sound, and I could feel the frustration setting in. Why didn’t I have a useful talent, like lip reading?
I could tell by their faces that they were afraid, and the video was clear enough for me to make out the fact that they both had blood around their wrists. My stomach churned and, for a brief moment, I considered joining Brian in the bathroom. Where were Howie and Kevin? Who had taken them? And why was their plight being broadcasted to the world?
