Armament

Chapter 11 - Broken Hearts and Things You Cannot Tell

After exiting the elevator on the Incipient floor Evanel leads me down corridor after corridor, his black steel toe capped boots the only sound in the never-ending white corridors. I manage not to say anything despite growing increasingly frustrated, but that doesn't stop me from imagining every scenario that could happen from following him to God-knows-where. He could be planning to murder me for what I said to Colin and what I know, not likely since there's so many cameras here and plus why would he go through this much trouble to do it? If his superiors wanted me dead they would have just taken me. Maybe he's tricking me into going to another training session so he can drown me again.

Despite knowing that's also probably not likely I still have to fight back a shiver as Evanel finally slows his pace and comes to a stop at the end of a corridor. He holds out a hand as he slips through the door, signalling for me to remain where I am. I release a sigh but comply. A few seconds later he pops his head out, giving me the go ahead to follow him inside.

I don't know what I expected to see but I don't find myself surprised at the dozens of screens around the room, but I am surprised to find it empty.

"Why's no one watching the cameras?" I comment, scanning the dark room for anything other than screens.

He heads straight for the corner of the room, sitting across from a laptop, "Despite what you'd probably think it's hard to find people to hire for menial tasks such as watching cameras in a secret facility such as this. There's so much security risk with hiring new people that they've been left with mediocre people on jobs like these and since people like me do the harder jobs such as keeping the Incipients under control and actually do it well the people left to watch the cameras find the whole thing boring so take more bathroom breaks than required."

I frown, stepping behind him as he scrolls through files on the laptop, "It can't be that hard to find new people to hire, can it?"

He shrugs, "No, but like I said there's a security risk. Especially if they fire people working behind the cameras since they see nearly everything that happens here. If they were fired and decided to get revenge on the S.S.C.C. by exposing them then it could be disastrous. The S.S.C.C. usually hires people with families they can threaten but there's nothing to say they wouldn't sell their own family out for the money they would get with the information they know."

"Okay," I take the desk chair next to him, "so are you going to tell me what I want to know? Or at the very least tell me what we're doing here."

"We're here to delete all evidence of our conversations that could get us killed."

I blink, thinking that I've misheard him for a second, "What?"

"I'm also putting the camera in here on a loop so no one knows we were here," he mumbles this, opening a video file of us in the elevator earlier, quick to delete the video of us talking to each other and looping it so it looks like we stood in silence the whole elevator journey.

"Okay... so while you're doing that can you tell me why you're helping me?"

"I'm undercover, helping you is something I've been told to do," He continues to edit another video, only stopping to brush his hair from his eyes.

"Undercover for who?" I try not to be hurt about him only helping me because he's been told to, "And why do they want you to help me?"

"I'm undercover for the Aberrants outside this facility. They didn't say why I had to help you, but I'm assuming it's because you're your mother's daughter. They probably think you have some leverage over your mother and that they can use that."