Dominance

Chapter 9: Information Overload

With the kitchen tidied mostly to what it once was, clean really being too strong a word, everyone once again settled at the battered table. Eric sat on one side, and Twister and Sparkie on the other. With the promise of insight, Sara had calmed down considerably but decided being close to the brothers was ironically the safest place and had wedged herself in between them.

Eric grumbled to himself, an ancient bag of icy frozen peas squashed against his cheek, while he again toyed with his laptop. Sara avoided looking at him and found herself gawkily staring down at some kind of breakfast condiment that was stuck on the end of Twister's tail. He either hadn't noticed it was there, or he didn't care.

Norman reappeared from another section of the apartment carrying a Carrots In Pyjamas themed lunchbox, and two pairs of worn jeans. He shook his head at Eric and then offered Sara an apologetic look. Sara said nothing and the mood remained awkward and edgy.

Eric shifted the peas against the swelling on his head. "I thought you said they wouldn't have powers, Norman. "He mumbled through gritted teeth.

"They shouldn't have. Well, nothing exceptional. Not without a source to draw from." Norman barked back.

"Well, so much for that. It felt pretty almighty to me."

"So then..." Norman cleared his throat as he fumbled open the plastic lunchbox, which was revealed to be a makeshift sewing container. "You must have many questions."

"I have an infinite amount of questions," Sara responded bitterly.

Norman chuckled. "Let me ask you this first. How did you get mixed up with these two?" He nodded towards the twin brothers, who had thus far remained silent. "As Eric crudely put earlier, it would be very difficult to escape the facility, and we've had no strategic opportunities to successfully break them out."

"Like I said, I didn't really do anything. I was on a field trip with my class. But we were all taken to that place instead. I think our relief teacher planned it."

"Interesting," Norman replied. "Normally the GRC is only authorised to take human test subjects that are mediocrities. The homeless, orphans, inmates on death row, for example. People who won't be missed. For them to do something so drastic..."
A sad expression shifted into Norman's tired burgundy eyes as his voice trailed off. "I fear the situation has escalated far sooner than expected."

That information certainly urked Sara, but Norman encouraged her to continue. As she recalled the next set of events he cut and pulled apart the rear middle seams of the jeans he was holding, then messily stitched the backsides of the denim thoroughly to stop the seams freeing any further. Obviously sewing was not his area of expertise.

Sara spoke of the abduction, of the four-legged Tyson, the laboratory, and the strange creatures she had seen. How Mr Shale had purposely separated her from her classmates and caged her between Twister and Sparkie, and then of the power outage and how Twister had blasted out of the building as they escaped. Norman listened carefully as he wrestled with the needle and thread between his fingers. He did not speak again till Sara had finished and appeared to be very concerned by the events she had retold.

"Sounds like you had an eye-opening day." Norman remarked as he held up his sewn masterpiece, which was actually just the jeans slightly altered to slip the twin's tails through. The needlework looked like a spastic muddle of drunken ants. "You're lucky we were snooping in the area today. We knew something out of the ordinary had to have happened in there once we noticed the GRC servers went down. Also with their security temporarily compromised, we took advantage of the servers rebooting to access the laboratory's data. So today was a double win for us."