Feeling

Chapter Three

“You're such a dick,” I said, glaring at Theo as I leaned against the bars of my cell.  “And to think that I thought you were cute, but now… just the biggest asshole I've ever met and I've met quite a few.”

“You think I'm cute, huh?” he said, raising an eyebrow but refusing to look at me.  He just kept typing on the traitorous computer I'd been using only a few hours earlier.

“I thought.  Now I know that you're a dick and that trumps everything.”

“Gee, thanks for the compliment,” he said, rolling his eyes.  “Now be quiet, I need to focus.”

“Can I ask, what was the point of all of this?” I asked, gripping the bars on either side of my face.  “Did you just want to humiliate me, or was there some hidden legal reason behind all of it?  Did you think that by making me do that, you'd be able to charge me with all those bigger and worse crimes, therefore keeping me off of the streets for longer?”

“Do you not understand what ‘be quiet’ means?”

“I suppose I understand the reasoning behind your plan,” I said, ignoring him.  I sighed and started walking around the cell again.  Not the biggest space, but just enough room for me top pace back and forth.  “I mean, if your goal is to get me in rehabilitation and force me to become a recovering addict rather than an active one, removing me from all the obvious sources of my addiction is probably a good way to do it...and on the government's dollar rather than your own.  But, of course, that is assuming that someone isn't smuggling illegal Links into the jails.  I have it on good authority that the Memento Moris have that market cornered nicely.”

“Oh my God, will you just shut up for, like a second?” demanded Theo angrily, but I continued on with my ranting.  Oh no, was I annoying him?

Good.

“And while we're on the subject of the Memento Moris, what was the point of bringing them up in the first place?  I mean, you explained it well enough by just saying you needed me to test a new security system.  There was no reason to supplement your lie.  You had no true need to see if I knew the Memento Moris or explain that they were the reason for the new system.  It all seems kind of pointless when you really start to--”

“Okay, Justice, I'm not kidding here when I say shut your mouth or I will shut it for you,” said Theo, shoving himself away from the desk he was working at.  He stalked up to the bars of my cell, now copying my position from earlier as he gripped the bars on either side of his face.  “Honestly.  There's a lot I have to do right now and if I don't get it all done in time, I'm going to have some serious hellfire to defend us from.”

“Aw, boo hoo,” I said, walking back up to the cell bars where he was.  “Poor Theo has things to do and meanie Justice just gets to relax in jail.”  I scoffed at him.  “What do you have to do that's so important, anyway?”

Theo rolled his eyes at me.  “I'm pretending to be you on the Internet so I can catch other criminals,” he said sarcastically.  “Smart plan, right?”

“Fine, don't tell me,” I said, crossing my eyes over my chest.  “But whatever you're actually doing, can you go do it at your actual workplace and leave me alone?  You've already got me locked up here.  Do you really have to torture me by making me look at your stupid face every ten seconds?”

“Thought you said I was cute,” he said, smirking as he returned to the dinged-up metal desk he’d set up shop on.  “Either way, I don't have a workplace.  I can work anywhere.  And according to Feel Inc's records, I've been in a meeting several rooms down with my higher-ups for about an hour, regarding an experimental laptop that went missing recently.  In fact, according to all official records regarding your crimes, we've never even met.  Your case was pretty much an open and shut case of Link abuse until you brought up the fact that you had hacked Feel Inc’s security.  Your arresting officer was Officer Simon Franklin, the same officer who always handles your case.  I'm just making sure all the loose ends are all tied up, that sort of thing.  Speaking of which…”  He reached under the desk and pulled out a backpack-- my backpack.