Alpha's Faire

XXXIII

"When was the last time you slept?" Captain Yong''s voice caused Jexanna to jump.

Her eyes winced at the bright light of the lab. God, was it morning already? She looked down, rubbing her eyelids. Jexanna sighed. Her attempt to avoid a night facing a silver gaze was for naught. She had fallen asleep and once more, he filled her dreams. As if he didn't haunt her already. Since their little exchange, Jexanna was painfully aware of the reality she faced. It was a warning. He was coming for her. And she spent the last twenty four hours on edge.

Granted, it wasn't just because of the tall, dark, and handsome werewolf on campus. Her suspicions of Dr. Thompson caused her to analyze every interaction the man had with her. In addition to that, she even went further to monitor his actions within the campus via CCTV system. It was installed to ensure that lost children could be found easily, and to hold eventual new hires for the foundation accountable for their behavior.

Jexanna had opposed the idea when Aerin presented it. She thought that it would cause friction between the children on campus and the staff. If abandoned children were aware that their new home had cameras, then they were less prone to trust them. If the staff couldn't be trusted, how could they trust their caretakers?
 
But Aerin argued that the system wasn't ever meant to be used to spy, just in case of emergencies or incidents. The compromise was the cameras were made to be practically invisible. They were tiny, undetectable and placed around the campus but kept out of bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, and apartments.

But now, she was using it for the purposes of spying on Dr. Thompson. Jexanna even installed a program to ping her phone every time he entered a new camera's frame. Jexanna wasn't one for taking chances right, but it left her feeling a tad hypocritical.

"Does it matter?" Jexanna groaned, running her fingers through her hair in an effort to comb out any tangles. Yong pulled a chair out and sat beside her. "When did you come in?"

"I arrived last night. You would have remembered that if you showed up like you were scheduled to." Jexanna rolled her eyes at his response. She had intentionally missed his arrival last night in an attempt to install the program.
 
"So Shou briefed you then?" She mused.

"After he threatened me to an inch of my life." Shou scoffed. "You're lucky that I'm even here, right now. Jex. Were you really going to do this with little field backup?"

"Do you think I have backup when I'm bounty hunting?" Jexanna remarked. "So, then do you have the files?" Her eyes glanced over towards him. Yong's lips went tight as he rolled his eyes, reaching into his pocket to pull out a small black marble. He rolled it down the table. Jexanna caught it and sighed.

"By your silence, I take it that you think this a shitstorm as well." Jexanna glanced over at the tightlipped Captain before pulling a small usb out of her pocket. It was pretty useless, with a giant hole where the hardware was supposed to be integrated. But once the marble was placed into the hole, the usb glowed green, ready to use.

"Even if you find out who's behind it, you know that there's a risk that you won't find a cure. This has already spread to dark fae. What is going to stop it from spreading past that?" Captain Yong's eyes narrowed at her as she pulled up her laptop and inserted the usb inside.

"There's always a risk. But that's why everyone else is here, to find a cure." She replied as the screen pulled up a black box. Jexanna began to type a passcode to open the files.

"Except for Dr. Hugh Thompson." Jexanna paused in her typing for just a moment. It wasn't a surprise that he connected the dots that far, so she didn't bother to move her eyes away from the screen.

"And what evidence do you have for that?"

"Your secret program to ping your phone." Captain Yong replied and Jexanna rolled her eyes. Of course, he was hooked up to security already and found her little program. Jexanna continued to type in credentials until the screen went black and displayed a dark themed interface of files. Jexanna's eyes skimmed the contents of the main folders.