Afterlife

18

Connie made her way down to the holding area of the IP headquarters, walking both quickly and with annoyance as the residual fury from this whole situation still simmered in her system. Even with all of the explanations she'd heard over the past few hours, she couldn't help but feel like there was something bigger going on here.

Why was this happening to them? What did they ever do to deserve this? Was it all just because their group was stronger than the others? Even if that was so, why would that give them the excuse to think something like this was okay to do? It's simple, there is no reason... people are just that petty that they are willing to blame others for their own mishaps, just so they can receive a pat on the back and an opportunity to rise through the ranks of popularity, while the honest ones who actually put in the work are thrown to the dogs. 'Well I'm not going to let that happen,' she told herself, 'Don't get me wrong, it's not because I care about maintaining our spot at the top, any other group could take the spot for themselves if they really wanted too, and I wouldn't give a crap, it's just that I would rather they do so through honest means, and by hard work, rather than by dragging our name through the mud. But that's not even the biggest part of this whole thing that is confusing me...' she thought as she made her way through the well lit halls, a new realization coming to mind.

'Jones' group has teamed up with us more times than I can count, and even though I know Santino and Sam don't always share the same opinions on things, I find it hard to believe that Sam Jones would set up Santino like this... it just doesn't seem like him,' she thought. 'Perhaps something could have happened that Marcus didn't tell me about, but I doubt it. Marcus would never lie to me. I guess the only real way to find out will be to ask Santino directly,' she reasoned, 'Hopefully he'll have some ideas as to why this might be happening,' she concluded as she finally reached the holding area.

There was a small gateway at the entrance of the holding area, where two strong guards were always stationed. The guards, knowing who she was, were able to easily guess why she was there, and out of respect for her, chose not to make a huge fuss over her visiting Santino as long as she followed procedure. This is in reference to checking for any weapons or objects she could use to pick the locks, or cause injury to the prisoner, that sort of thing. Once they cleared her, they then sent her on ahead, telling her that her member was in room four.

Surprisingly enough, there was actually very little crime in Afterlife, short of some thefts here and there, or some street brawls over trivial matters, usually resulting in a one night stay in a holding cell at most for punishment. So the IP's only had ten holding cells made in order to save space, seeing as how half of them were usually empty. They also were far more spacious than your typical holding cell. They were similar to the arrival rooms in shape and size, except the walls and floor were made of a smooth, black material that had a slight shine to it due to the bright light emanating from the ceiling just like in the arrival rooms. Another difference, however, was that the bed was now positioned against the wall, rather than in the center of the room, and there was a row of steel bars dividing the room in half.

As Connie reached the door marked with a silver four, she stood there for a moment, needing to stand on her tiptoes to look through the small window in the upper section of the door. These were so the guards could see what their prisoner was doing with a single glance through these windows, rather than by having to fully open the door and look in awkwardly before leaving again. Connie wanted to get an idea of what she would need to prepare herself for before entering the room. If what Marcus said was true, and that Santino had been attacked by Hitori in the field, having seen the man's ferocious fighting style herself, she wanted to see what condition Santino was in before entering the room.

As she peered through the small opening, she saw that Santino was still dressed in his IP clothing, meaning he probably hadn't gone through processing yet. This was something that was usually done if a person was going to be in IP custody for long amounts of time, in order to easily identify prisoners if they attempted an escape.