witness || h.s.|| ON HOLD

two || the enemy of my enemy is my friend

Harry

   The ride back to base was a silent one, which is a usual occurrence after a mission is completed. The job was done and for a brief and fleeting moment, there was nothing to talk about.

  The beautiful silence that I often cherished was interrupted by the car pulling around to the back entrance of the building that I knew all too well. I guess I would even go as far as to call it my home, as messed up and sad as that was. 

   Whit looked up from his phone for the first time the whole drive, realizing we had arrived at our destination. 

   "That was a nice little drive, wasn't it, Harry?" He quipped cheerfully, reaching across the armrest between us to give me a pat on the shoulder.

   "Very nice indeed," I mumbled, already unbuckling my seatbelt and opening the door, going around to his side of the car to open the door for him next.

    He dramatically extended his legs out, stretching his whole body as though he had been sat in that position his whole life, and could finally change positions, as opposed to the reality, which was the quick twenty five minute drive we had just endured.

     The thing about Whit is that if you didn't know who he actually was, he would be a very likable person. Well, likable on most days. 

  He was charming and very outgoing, just like he was the night he picked me off the streets. He drew people in with his words, he could make everything seem like the best idea in the world, just from the way he'd tell you about it. 

   He was sadly enough the closest thing to a fatherly figure I'd ever had, although I guess he'd be more like a big brother, due to the fact that he was only about ten or twelve years older than I was. He guided me, trained me, recalibrated every fiber of my being until I was pretty much just a shadow of himself. I'm not quite sure that's something I should be proud of, but it is what it is.

 Whit and I walked side by side up to the back entrance of what we have nicknamed "The Fort". It was a very unassuming building. Greystone walls, dark, almost black windows. It looks like your standard storage warehouse. But inside? It was anything but.

   Once you went in through the back, which pretty much everyone did, you had to enter a code into the padlock on the second set of doors, do thumbprint scanning, retina, and voice recognition, and that was just the first part.

    Once the thick and heavy metal doors slowly creaked open, you then had to go through a search from the security, everyone did, no matter how high up you were, well, everyone but Whit. 

   I groaned in annoyance as I approached my absolute least favorite security guard, Ralph, who always seemed to have it out for me. Most people just got a standard pat-down, but Ralph just never seemed to be too fond of me, for reasons I don't think I will ever understand. Due to this distaste for me, I had to take off my shoes, empty the entire contents of my bag on the table, and go through the metal detector, which of course, always went off, seeing as I was basically a walking artillery. 

   I stood inside the frame of the metal detector, throwing my arms up in defeat as the loud beeping began. 

  "Ralph, you do realize it's my job to be armed, correct?" I asked sarcastically. He just grunted in reply, ignoring my frustration.

"Whit, am I done here?" I sighed, growing tired of hearing the repetitive beeping ringing in my ears.

   Whit laughed, and nodded, beckoning me to follow.