The Strays

Chapter Eleven

I didn't go out to say goodbye as my friends left, instead I locked myself in my workshop, watching from my window as they disappeared under the cover of night.

 

I spent every day after that working tirelessly on project after project. Watching and observing the surrounding chaos, hoping to figure out what exactly it was The Elites were planning.

 

I'd just returned to my warehouse, a safe-house of sorts with spare parts and supplies, when I noticed something wasn't right. Instinctively, I rushed up to my workshop, where the previously locked door was now wide open, all of my papers and work scattered across the floor instead of sitting in neat stacks on my workbench. I put down my supplies and picked up a wrench that was nearby, raising it defensively as I searched the room. I was so fixated on what was ahead of me that I forgot to pay attention to what might have been behind me. An error I would later regret as the intruder caught me off guard, pinning me to the wall, a knife to my throat. “Do I have your attention?”

I slowly nodded my head affirmatively.

“Good. I think it’s about time we had a bit of a chat about your old man.”

 

The masked stranger pushed me over to a metal chair, where he forced me to sit down before securing my wrists and ankles with a set of zip ties. My work bench, and my tools, were only a few short metres away, so I desperately tried to shift the chair closer, but the stranger caught me before I could succeed.

"Nice try, really it was, but I've got some questions to ask you and I can't do that if you run away." The young man in front of me cooed as he pulled me and the chair into the center of the room.

"Who sent you after me and how the fuck did you know I was here?"

"There's a lot that I know about you, for example before your family died you were Caelyn, you faked your own death and moved to Alderton where you spent some years sleeping rough under the alias El. Something happened in Alderton after the virus hit and you fled, eventually joining the E.A.D. When they asked your name, you told them it was Indigo after your favourite colour, Indie for short, though they changed it to Liberty when you entered the field." 

I looked him over sceptically as I tried to figure out how I knew him and how he had learned so much about me. "If you know so much about me, then you're aware of how I feel about people breaking into my place and tying me up. Now tell me who the hell you are, who sent you, and then leave before I break free and make it so you never walk out of here again."

 

The intruder brushed past my work station, scanning the blueprints of my latest project that he'd scattered across my desk. "This is some pretty sophisticated work, especially for a nineteen-year-old in the midst of the apocalypse, but then again you are your parents' daughter, aren’t you? The straight-A student, who’s twice as stubborn as her mum and as smart as both her parents combined." Whoever this guy was, he was really starting to piss me off. "I'm sorry. Did I touch a nerve with that one?"

"I will fucking kill you!" I screamed, desperately trying to get myself free.

"Just tell me what I want to know and I'm gone. You'll never have to see me again."

"What exactly is it you want me to say?"

"All I want is your dad's research. It wasn't at your house, or his lab, so where is it?" The mysterious young man's tone wasn't intimidating or scary. It was simply monotonous, as though he were engaging in a business transaction.