To Fly Free: Resolve

Chapter 11 - The Flash Drive

 "Should we talk about this in the living room?" Himari asked, moving to get up.

"Good idea." Noah got up too, followed by everyone else. Himari brought the plate of cookies and the ice tea and set them on the coffee table.

Once everyone was seated and comfortable Noya started, "Okay, so, picking up where Asahi left off, which was the video correct?" He looked to Asahi who nodded. "Right. So after that, Enno did some looking into the Secret Facility place. He found the website and pointed out that they never said anywhere on the site, or on social media, that they were trying to save or help the endangered species. All they said was that they were trying to learn about them, and even that they would do anything to do that." He summarized, "Then he said he found another of their sites on the dark web. It was like a black market site. He didn't actually show us, he just told us about it. He said they were paying people to bring them the species they were looking for including winged children. He said it also didn't matter how the species were treated during capture and transport, just that they had to be alive. Apparently people who bring them winged children get paid a lot." He paused to look at everyone in the room. It seemed to him that all of them knew this stuff already. He took a breath and continued, "Then he said he went to where there was more info on winged children. I guess there was a description about winged children themselves, and then more info about some of the experiments that would be done to them. He also said he found pictures." Evan flinched at that.

"He saw the pictures?"

Noya nodded, knitting his brow, "He said he only actually looked at a few, but there was more he had on a flash drive that he said he was going to go through at some point. He did say he ran them through a program to check and see if any of them were altered, and none of them were. But he still hasn't looked at them." he finished.

"Noya-san." Evan said seriously. "He can't see those photos. Both me and Shoyo's pictures are there, but it's Shoyo's I'm worried about. This isn't even about the team finding out about us. I'll tell them the truth right now if it means none of them see those pictures. Shoyo would completely lose it if he knew someone saw them."

"Evan." He whipped his head around to meet Himari's gaze. "What are the photos of?" She asked, scared of the answer.

He shook his head. "No one can see them. Not even you." He returned his focus to Noya. "We need to get them away from Ennoshita-san."

"How?" Asahi asked.

Evan looked down in thought. "One of you has to tell him that you'd be willing to look through them so he doesn't have to. Then casually ask if he's made any copies." He looked up and into each of their eyes. "I'm trusting you guys not to look at them and give them directly to me."

Both nodded.

"They have the pictures?" Came a quiet, shaking voice came from the entryway of the living room. Shoyo stood there, shivering like he was in the middle of a snowstorm.

Evan jumped up from his seat and closed the distance between him and Shoyo, who seemed to be having a very rough day. "We'll get them back. No one will see them. You're okay." Shoyo nodded into the crook of his neck and tried to calm his breathing.

"Can they get them now? Please?" He whimpered.

Evan looked back to Asahi and Noya, who was already pulling out his phone and standing up to make the call.

"Yeah, Noya-san is going to make sure no one sees them." Evan rubbed Shoyo's back and guided him to sit down on the couch.

Noya walked away a short distance so that any background sound wouldn't give them away, and then pressed the call button beside Enno's number. He wasn't quite sure how he was going to convince Ennoshita to give him the flash drive, but he did know that this was important to his kohai, and so he was going to do it.