Genius (CENTURIES series: Book #2)

Epilogue

The Alexandrettia,
The principal's office,
A few weeks ago:

"Run man, just run!"

He watched from his computer screen as the two boys bolted down the halls, doing their best to run away from the police. He could've sued these burglars instantly, but he had to be certain first. He thought he saw something and needed to make sure his eyes weren't playing games with him when he had seen him.

He continued watching with a grimace as the police grabbed the bigger one of them and started to beat him over the head with his police baton. The sound was excruciating to listen to, even if it was guttural over his secret CCTV surveillance, and it didn't get any prettier to listen to no matter how many times he watched it.

He waited for the exact moment when the one burglar tilted his head sideways to glare at the cop, and then froze the image. With a frown, he then enhanced the frozen image and waited for the pixels to clear up. After running it through his magnification program, the blurry image cleared into fine lines.

That face. He knew he had seen him before.

He ran a hand over his mouth, shocked to be looking at one of them, but even more shocked that he hadn't trusted his eyes sooner. After all, they never failed him, neither did his memory.

He was positive; this was one of the testees from the C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S lab.

He had gotten a helluva lot of ink done, purely basing his conclusion from the looks of the ink on his skull and hands. It didn't take a genius to figure out if he had it on the visible parts of his body, he probably had it on the non-visible parts as well.

But that face... he remembered it. He had grown some, but he still looked somewhat the same.

So what did this mean? Had he escaped? He had to have. They didn't just let people walk out of there. No, if they could, they would keep them there for life.

He scoffed at the memory of when they tried to recruit him. How dumb did they think he was? They knew who they were addressing and yet they tried to fool him with such a stupid scam.

He shook his head and turned his focus back to the tape that had been filmed that very same night. When the police had called him and told him there had been a break-in at the school, he had rushed down there to his office to check his surveillance tape. Now, nearly two hours after the burglary, he had watched the tape at least 16 times, trying to figure out what the hell they had been doing. They hadn't stolen anything, just smashed a lot. Vandalized.

Then there was that other boy – the one besides the one from C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S – his friend, the one whom he had taken the fall for. His face didn't seem familiar, nevertheless the work he had done to try and stop the alarms from going off had been impressive – he had failed, but still, it had been really impressive.

Watching the screen with a thoughtful expression, he crossed his arms and creased his forehead. All the scenarios as to what had caused them to do this started to scroll through his head like they always did. The second one more confusing than the first. Finally, he decided to do some poking around; He had to know if the one with the tattoos was indeed an escapee from the facility. And if so, were they looking for him?

Cracking his fingers and his neck, he sat upright in his chair and then faced his laptop. He begun typing, opening up his program.

Let the hacking begin.

Not twenty minutes later, he had accessed C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S' database. He had done it quite a few times before, so by now it was routine. After a quick search through their facial database, an imagine of a young boy that resembled the one on his computer screen appeared. He clicked it and magnified it. It was him.

Name: Elijah Greyson
Age: 20
Family: Orphan
IQ: Incalculable
Contract Expiration: Age of 21
Status: Missing

He frowned at the cursive red letters that said 'missing' and then turned to look at the image of him on his computer screen again.

Missing. So he had escaped. After a quick glance at the report that followed, it would seem he had been missing for a whole of four years. Impressive that he had been able to hide from them for so long, he had to give him that. He really had to be smart.

So why did he and his friend break into the school? That was downright stupid. It would put him on the map.

He couldn't know for sure, maybe he never would. But one thing was certain; He was not letting those C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S bastards take that boy back to that hellhole. Not on his goddamn watch.

He now turned to the phone on his desk and picked it up, briefly checking his clock for the time. 4.23am in the morning. That was perhaps a bit early to be calling, but unfortunately this couldn't wait.

Dialing his friend's number, he smirked to himself, already knowing that he would surely bite his head off for calling him this early. But he would get by without a few hours sleep, this was more important.

He had to make sure that that boy Elijah's records didn't go public. He knew the way the game was played, so he knew that with a bit of luck and persuading, he could convince the judge to only sentence him to community service. And where? Here, at the Alexandrettia, where he could personally keep an eye on him.

His reasons were much more intricate and personal than that, though. By sentencing him to do his community service here, he could keep his name off the employment list so that there weren't any public records of his name on file for them to find him by. Also, since he would be signing a slip every day to hand over for his P.O, it was important that that P.O knew not to file his records into the digital system, but rather keep it on paper.

Waiting for the phone to get picked up, he kept looking at the image of the unfortunate boy. He remembered when he was that age. How confusing everything was. What he went through himself.

– How one girl had changed all that.

Finally the phone was picked up, and his old friend who today proudly called himself a Parole Officer, groaned into the phone with a tired voice. "Hello? Who the hell is this calling me this early?"

"It's Alexander. I need a favor, Jagger."

• • •

The (genius?) End