Tip of the Tongue [CMS Bk. 1 - BoyxBoy][Complete/Editing]

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

The pungent smell of chlorine hit the back of his throat. He covered his mouth, choking as his nose was assaulted by the sour scent. It wafted past Darrien as he stepped inside the next room. Ren hung by the door, hesitant to go in when the smell was already so bad.

A blue light glowed from within the room. It was faint, but enough to illuminate a small space in the center of the room. Ren's glut clenched as he took in the room.

Fairly new flat screen TVs were mounted onto the far wall. Some of them were static with nothing playing on them while others were showing what seemed like live security camera. Ren quickly counted the TVs. There were eight of them. Four on top and four on the bottom. Below them was a built in wall desk made out of metal that spanned the entire wall. There were three chairs, all empty, pushed neatly beneath the desk.

To the right of the room were more metal shelves, however, this time they were full of storage boxes rather than cables. They were shoved onto the shelves, some squeezed into tight spaces so much that the sides were caved in.

He looked back at the TVs. Some of the live feeds were places that he recognized. There was the front and back of the building, the hallway that they had come down, and even the frontal view of the offices. But most of them, all of the other feeds, were of places that he didn't know. That he'd never seen before.

The first few were just other parts of the building. A room that was set up with a long table and chairs—maybe a conference room, and another hallway of offices with a person walking down it.

But the next series of feeds were unsettling.

They were hard to make out because the rooms they occupied were dark. What he could make out were concrete walls and floors, steal rods imbedded into the ceilings, and some of them had metal tables with wheels.

"What is this?" Ashton hovered behind Ren.

Darrien walked in front of them. He stood in front of the screens. The glow of the TVs illuminated his face. His shadow was cast onto the far wall. The light above him was more like a lightning bug rather than a real light. The dim room felt as small as the closet.

Ren's mouth had gone dry. His eyes roamed the channels over and over. He scanned them from top to bottom. The person that had been walking through one of the halls was gone, leaving the screens blank for the time being. The rooms with the metal tables and cement walls...he had an idea what went on there.

Darrien pointed to the exact feeds Ren was thinking about. "This is where they bring them."

"Jesus." Ashton turned away. He ran a hand through his hair.

Ren was too shocked to move. It was strange how this wasn't the place where the torture had been delivered, but he could still feel the pain of all those people through the screens of the televisions. It must have been the same when he saw the pictures.

Each piece of technology had captured a sliver of the emotions.

He hated this. He didn't want any of this.

Darrien moved away from the desk and walked over to the metal shelves. He grabbed a box at random and flipped open the lid. "These are what you need."

He pulled out a VHS tape. "The problem is that I don't know which one has a clear picture of our insignia."

Darrien held the tape out toward Ren at first. Ren stared at it. He shook his head. He couldn't touch that. It was bad enough that he could just feel everything that had happened on that tape by just being around it. He didn't want to find out what else he could feel when he actually touched it.