Runaway

Chapter 38

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~Uploaded June 21st, 2015

"Did you have to chase him away like that?" I glared at Ajax as he grabbed a chair and sat down by the bedside. Dylan had left us alone, but I was afraid Ajax had given off the wrong impression.

"I had to. He seems like a nice kid though. You guys dating?"

I straightened. "That is none of your-"

"So that's a yes then," he cut in. "I thought so. Why else would he be here, visiting you as soon as he's allowed? It's the holidays too. Bet he's got a big family waiting for him at home."

It was pointless to argue, and I'm pretty sure there were more pressing matters for Ajax's being here than to be inquisitive of my love life, or lack of thereof. "Would you stop playing mind reader and tell me what you're doing here?"

His playful smile vanished and he immediately switched from joking to strictly business. "It's about Eric."

My heart clenched. "Eric? What happened to him? Where is he? Is he okay?" A million and a half questions exploded in my head.

"Truth be told, I don't know." Said clenched heart now dropped to my feet.

"Tell me everything."

Ajax took a breath and explained. "About six months ago, Eric got an assignment to track down the missing subjects. You know the ones who were labeled as incompetent?"

I nodded. Project Maximus had started out with 26 of us, one for each letter of the phonetic alphabet; Alpha is for Ajax, Bravo for Becca, I was Delta, Eric's Echo, and Finn is Foxtrot.

Over the years, however, our numbers shrank. It was gradual, but by the time I was thirteen, it was just us five. I didn't remember much about the others. We were only told that they weren't suited for the job and kicked out of the program.

Only later did we find out that they had been killed instead.

Or so it seemed, anyways. "Yeah well, turns out, those dead subjects? Not so dead after all."

"What? I thought they had been 'taken care of'," I quoted the general, though it pained me.

"Apparently not. They had escaped somehow, just like you did, growing up and getting along as best they could. They're spread thin across the country, and Eric's assignment was to bring them all back in."

"And he accepted it?" I was astounded. "Does he know what could happen if they're brought back into that place? Anything could happen. There are no boundaries to the horrors it is capable of."

"I know that, and Eric did too-"

"Can you please stop referring to him in the past tense?" It was making me nervous.

Ajax cleared his throat. "Sorry. Eric does know the risks, but I think a small part of him was hoping that he could find you at the same time. He was never the same after you left, you know. I bet you wouldn't even recognize him now. He's just so different than how he was three years ago." He sounded nostalgic.

"Good different, or bad?"

"Let's just say that you can't exactly call him your kid brother anymore. He acts like anything but." He shook his head, discouraging any more questions I wanted to ask. "Anyways, back to my point. So Eric accepted the assignment, and he went off with some goons to find the missing 22 subjects, yourself included. They found the first one, Gulf, within a couple of days, but he escaped. It was the same with Hotel, India, and Juliet. You can imagine the lecture he got for that, being unable to capture a single one of the past subjects.