Dark Angel (A 001 prequel story)

3 - Guilty

Then she wanted to know more.
She had a full name, she had a new key to uncover more secrets about that mysterious angelic orderly.
After following Brenner like an obedient puppy, Rose took her chance once she was on her own.
She willed herself to be invisible to the security cameras and walked to his office.
Someone who would have bumped into her would have said that she was up to something.
Rose stopped in front of the door with the tag

Dr Martin Brenner

She turned the knob.
It was unlocked.
She stepped in and quickly closed the door behind her. She took a deep breath.

She walked to his desk and pulled at a drawer. After some resistance, it opened and revealed a pile of folders.
On the top was a folder with her name on it.
It contained notes and many articles about her and her family's massacre.
She didn't need to know more about herself.
She searched through the other folders.
A group of them was titled Indigo Projects.
It contained folders named from 002 to 018.
Then finally application forms and files about the people working on the lab, finding many unfamiliar names.
She was about to give up when her fingers finally revealed what she was looking for.

Peter Ballard

A very thin folders with just his curriculum and few articles news.
What surprised her was that none of those papers showed pictures of him.
Rose remembered that whenever journalists interviewed her and wrote about her, they were obsessed with taking pictures of her. She was confident that half the country knew about her as the little prodigy.
But why nothing on Peter?
She had been curious to see how he looked when he was younger.
She felt delusional.
Rose was pondering the idea of borrowing those papers so she could read them calmly in her room, when her hands reached the bottom of the drawer and a big title attracted her attention.
The front page of the local newspaper talked of an ancient demon killed a family.
Something in the alleged picture seemed familiar to her, but before she could wonder why, the door opened and Brenner marched in.

Rose almost panicked.
In that moment she would have preferred facing an ancient demon rather than that.
She felt guilty. Brenner trusted her, he wanted them to be friends.
And she had betrayed him.
What for?
A handful of smoke.

"Is everything alright?" he asked with diffidence. He knew she wasn't supposed to be there.
The open drawer and the messed up folders spoke too clearly of her intentions.
"I was looking for you. I hoped we could talk" she said with a choked voice. It was a lie. And he knew that.
"I'll join you in a moment" he motioned at her to get out of the room. He didn't need to repeat it twice.
She walked passed him, terribly mortified.
"I'm sorry" she managed to whisper, but he already turned his back at her to reach his table.

Rose got another heart attack when out of the door she bumped into Peter.
He gazed at her blankly, not reacting to her wretched look.
"I'll take you back to your room" he said as a matter of fact and she just followed him, ashamed that his first words to her happened in her lowest moment.
"Am I in trouble?" she asked shyly. She needed to hear his opinion on what happened.
"Do you feel like you deserve to be punished?".
"No" she said with no hesitation.
Was looking for some information a crime?
"Then there's nothing to worry about" he opened the door of her room and stepped back to let her in "Enjoy your day".
He closed the door before she could open her mouth.
He didn't sound kind as his words suggested. It was like he was angry at her.