War for Genius

11.- Finalizing the preparations

Hello everyone, I'm back again with a new chapter. Originally, I wrote this one before the chapter published last week. But after finish both, I realized that time sequence didn't fit, so I swap them to make events order be in the right place.

As always, I'd like to thank empro-8 who's helping me to edit this story. Now, enjoy the chapter 😉

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It had been ten days – ten whole days! – since Beaks talked with the boy and left him locked in that small room under the watchful "care" of Falcon Graves. Beaks still wanted to wait a few more days before meeting the boy again and starting the second part of the plan. He assumed that by that time the boy's psyche would be weakened enough to be able to... play with it.

But in the meantime, Beaks had been busy going through each of his various properties' registers. It was hardly surprising that the authorities checked those properties multiple times in case he'd decided to transfer his 'prisoner' to one of the places where they had already searched, and even made simultaneous registers on two or three of these properties. But the parrot didn't care. He knew they'd never find Huey, because the boy wasn't in any of those buildings. There was no way they could find him.

During that time, Mark was also looking for more signs of contempt and distrust to show to the duck dressed in red. He'd found some real gold mines while reviewing the recordings in his possession. He saved all the files under a high security lock on his computer, almost impossible to hack.

All of those clips showed instanced in which Huey had been scolded, punished or belittled by some other mansion's inhabitant. Nothing too serious or exaggerated, but given the fragile state in Mark expected him to be in when he showed him these videos, he was certain they would plant dark seeds of doubt in the boy's mind.

One of these recordings, for example, showed:

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Scene

Huey was sitting quietly in the dining room reading a book when Scrooge's housekeeper came out from the kitchen, who, upon seeing him, suddenly approached to him and called:

"Huey."

The boy looked up from his book at the housekeeper and replied:

"Mrs. Beakley, what's up?"

Beakley approached a couple more steps, and gave the boy dressed in red a harsh look, explained:

"Earlier, I passed by your room and the door was open. I saw that everything was a complete mess. You have to clean it."

Huey's eyes widened, and rising from the table, he looked at the woman and replied:

"Yes, I know, but I-"

The woman crossed her arms and cut the boy saying:

"No buts, Huey, go tidy up your room right now."

Huey had his back to the entrance door from the lobby and couldn't see it, but at that moment, his brothers appeared, and when they saw that Beakley was scolding the older triplet, they slowly and quietly turned back. It was clear that the housekeeper had seen them leave, but instead of calling them, her attention remained focused on the boy in front of her, who simply lowered his head and meekly replied:

"Yes, I'm going."

Huey left the dining room, and within a few seconds, the other two triplets entered the dining room with triumphant smiles on their faces, they had gotten out of having to tidy up their room.