Inhumanity

Chapter 10

Melanie's PoV
Finding out who let Layton out of the drawers is number one on my priority list, and of course that takes me to the janitors. I have the head one dragged to the breakmen headquarters to interrogate him about the whereabouts of our missing detective. He sits there trying to seem innocent "Is there a Janitorial problem?" He asks. I snort "Funny", I lean forward "Do you know the punishment for trafficking drugs on Mr. Wilford's train?" I say carefully. He remains pretty calm "An arm" he states. I raise an eyebrow "Dominant side." I add. He swallows "The hand that feeds.". I really can't be bothered to be slow "Or the hand that supplies the train with Kronole. The hand that helped a prisoner named Andre Layton escape from the Drawers. I'm guessing in exchange for suspension drugs to make said Kronole." I snap. He shakes his head "I don't know anything about that." But he now seems less confident. I fold my arms "You know... it's not the drugs that I care about right now." He shakes his head "Doesn't change what I know." I indicate for him to hold out his bad "You're right-handed?" I guess, I run my hand over the skin, it's smooth. This guy has clearly never done much manual work "Not very calloused for a mop-and-bucket guy, are you?" I say. He holds his hands up "All right, I met Layton once. Five, six weeks ago, The night of the fight.He came to me and asked me about the murders, and I gave him some information. And that's all." He declares. I chuckle a little "Terence...that's not enough to save a finger." He sighs "Look... I can help you. If he's on the run, sooner or later, he's gonna come to me. And then I'll bring him to you." He promises. I click my tongue "glad you're being so helpful" I nod "you can go".

He gets up to go but stops "as proof of my loyalty to the train and the hunt for Layton I'll give you some extra information. I had a young woman come to me, last night. She was looking for him as well" he pulls a necklace out of his pocket and holds it up "gave me this little trinket in return for information". My breath catches in my throat, it's eves necklace. One she was given on her 3rd birthday and she rarely takes it off "Eve?" I question. He nods "yeah that was her, she seemed a little shaky after I told her what may have happened, that Layton was probably in the drawers, that he escaped..." he smirks "very pretty face" he comments. He then slips away, I'm still sat in my seat "oh shit" I hiss, I grab the nearest phone and punch in the number to the engine. Ben answers "Ben, where's Eve?" I demand. He seems surprised "hello to you too, eve and Javi went to do some work down train. Remember you said it would be good for her to get out of the engine" he says. I shake my head "she got out last night" I whisper. Ben chuckles "that's not right, her chips deactivated" he argues. The panic starts to rise "she reactivated it, she knows about Layton.... you need to contact Javi now!"

Eve PoV
I can't believe I'm about to do this, I keep trying to back out if it but then my anger comes back and screams at me to run, run and never look back. I laugh nervously "Javi, your gonna have to do this. I'm all thumbs today" I say. He takes a look "what's up today?" He asks as he moves in to see what I've not been able to do. The phone rings shrilly interrupting my chance to answer Javis question "I'll get that". I grab the phone and bring it to my ear "hello?". I'm a little surprised to hear Ben on the other end "Eve, we need you back up train" he says. I tilt my head "we're still carrying out he job you sent us to do" I protest. "Javi can carry out the task by himself, back to the engine now" he snaps. He knows, I don't know how he figured it out but he knows, "See you soon" I hang up before he can say anything else. Javi glances round "Ben?" He questions, I nod "yeah, worrying as usual". He nods "so anyway what's up with you, you've not been yourself all morning" he turns round to fix his focus back in the job. I shrug and go to the rucksack and pull out a large book "don't know just not really feeling it" I say carefully. He nods "yeah I get you, some days I just want to-" but I slam the book on his head knocking him out before he can finish "oh god, oh god" I repeat over and over again as I look at what I've done. I set him in the recovery position and check him over. I only hit him with enough strength to knock him out for an hour, max". I pull out a scalpel and lift up my boiler-suit leg, I take a deep breath before breaking the skin. I hiss as the pain shoots up my leg, I pull the skin apart and shove my finger in digging around for the tracking chip. I find it and yank it out quickly. Then I apply a temporary skin patch, I grab my rucksack and survey the mess. I want to scream and shout but I can't afford to hang around here soon Mel or Ben will come to investigate, probably sooner than I anticipated. I opt for the only thing I can really do and stomp on the chip, which honestly, is the most satisfying thing I've done in a long time.