𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲 | 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗱𝘀 [ON HOLD]

ix. lost girls

╔═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╗
— DAY SEVEN —
season one, episode five, part one

❝𝐬𝐡𝐞'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫, 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝.❞

─── • ───

MEANWHILE...

Gretchen paced the floor of the control room, the recent absence of two of her subjects consuming her mind. Her research assistants, Thom and Susan, had filtered through the camera angles of the island, unable to find anything to acquire insight of their whereabouts. The office was more crowded than usual, courtesy of the addition of both Audrey and Alex, who were two members of the ground team that delivered care packages to the island, while being undetected and efficient.

Audrey was Gretchen's right-hand woman, reliable and trustworthy. In the most stressful of situations, she was the only person capable of stopping her boss from spiralling out of control. Alex, on the other hand, was different. He'd developed a connection to the subjects after surveying them for so long, especially after having made contact with them as he posed as the flight attendant on the plane. Now, as a result, his opinions of Gretchen and her methods were strained, and it often put the two of them at odds.

And as it was, there was tension that now lingered in the underground bunker as they searched for the missing girls, each of them working on opposite ends of the room.

"Just because we don't have eyes on them, doesn't mean disaster," Audrey felt inclined to remind Gretchen, both of the hovering around the desk of case files, far from the audible reach of the others. "They're probably on the western side, where we've had some camera outages due to high winds."

But Gretchen wasn't at all convinced. She was known to be too invested into her research to let such things deter her, and yet every time something didn't go according to plan, she found that blaming everyone else for the mistakes that she could have predicted herself was a much more appropriate response.

"And whose fault is that?" Gretchen, who had swallowed two Ibuprofen pills to calm her ebbing headache, raised a suggestive eyebrow across the room towards Alex. "Maybe this is some sort of sabotage. Or maybe I'm just uncomfortable having someone who actively hates me working in my employ."

"He doesn't hate you," Audrey reassured her, giving her an amicable pat on the shoulder. "It's just that ever since the incident with Jeanette, he's been a bit protective of the subjects."

"Have I not the desire to protect them also?" Gretchen countered, and when Audrey shot her a displeasing look, she sighed inwardly and crossed the room towards her other employees. "Alex, you good?" she asked aloud, and the young man quirked an eyebrow before nodding. "But are you? Because I just thought, as someone who's become very invested in the welfare of our participants, you'd be pretty concerned about our rogue girls."