I might've lied about when we were leaving

Which means we might be out of contact for a while and is also the reason Ben's throwing caution to the wind and (gasp!) talking to you guys for once. I don't know when we'll get back to an Internet connection, since we're planning to go off the grid somewhat and the only places that might have free wifi in the smaller towns will be few and far between. And James (or whoever James had in line to replace him as my 'consultant' if I ran and he died), if you're hiding out the front in that house waiting to ambush us, well, by the time this shows up we'll be long gone over the back fence, so better luck next time. Or not.

We left at 10 o'clock, or thereabouts - I'm not so good about writing about future plans as if they're past events. Suck on that. I'm a huge fan of time delayed posting right now, I just wish it wasn't raining so damn hard outside, even if it makes the escape significantly more stealthy.

Anyway, why we had to leave, and also why we had to leave earlier than I told you all: There's been a former colleague of mine living across the road from Ben for some time. I kind of had a suspicion there was when I discovered one of Ben's neighbors watching the house rather intently, but it's not exactly the kind of thing you can prove just watching some old guy watching your house.

I took a little bit of a risk, calling around to see if there was anybody in the area (I said I needed someplace to stay in-between two cities which I'm not going to name, because the town Ben lives in is really the only option insofar as accommodation goes). Fortunately for me, news of my car-crash apparently hasn't traveled, since nobody seems to know I've changed sides.

Turns out there was, and he had a phone number I could contact, so I gave him a call while I was watching the neighbor watch me. We had a nice little chat about how the Touched operate, and since he was pretty far gone I managed to convince him that he'd have to spend a couple of days staring at us creepily without doing anything, since that's what people think Touched do. I won't go into detail but as far as I know it kind of works in a feedback loop and makes it what Touched do, just like all of them writing in code all the time (though, admittedly, imprinted behavioural patterns also plays a part in the code-writing being so prevalent).

Anyway, I figured we had until the weekend before he started doing anything after our little chat, since he wasn't exactly the youngest or most spry Servant I've ever met. I also figured he had orders to alert whoever he's in contact with (which if I'm going to guess is most probably James if he's still alive) when we left, so as to help arrange an ambush or set up a tail. I also figured somebody was probably watching the blog (possibly him, since he was up with it enough to use a cell-phone). Hence 'leaving' on Saturday night and actually leaving now-ish. Actually, make that now, or the ten-ish minute it'll take to pack the last of our stuff. Ben's getting a little paranoid - which I don't blame him for, I am too - so I'm going to have to go. We've got his car parked two streets away, so as to not be seen leaving. Wish us luck.