Children's Games: A Story of Modern Consequence

Chapter 34

~Emilia~

"Katerina, you must understand that finding evidence was part of this mission. You knew that. This is what you signed up for."

Emilia stood her ground, trying to drown out Anna's muffled movements sorting through all the tests, and Joshua pacing by the doorway. But Dominik wasn't standing down either, with his arms crossed over his chest and an annoyed expression on his hard face.

"Of course there were leads that pointed us towards here, and there were small amounts of evidence that proved that Australia was behind these war crimes. But we were sent here to find concrete evidence. Stuff that we can take back and release to the rest of the world to prove that it wasn't us. "

"What small amounts of evidence?" she quoted slowly, trying to consider his words despite the hardness of his stare. He wouldn't meet his eye and it angered him even more that she would speak so boldly.

"Classified evidence that is not any of our business."

Emilia took a deep breath and turned around, trying to give herself space. What did that even mean?

"Oh... So, if you didn't find anything, you won't release it?" She asked slowly.

"No." he said quickly. "We are here to even a wrong, not create another one."

"But all that aside, Shortcake," came Anna's rude interruption as she slammed the fridge door shut and skulked towards her, "Australia is a TB84-free zone. Yet they have it right here. Testing it out for cures in case of a leak. What do you think that means, huh? It's here under perfect preservation and hasn't spread outside of their little labs because it was created here and handled perfectly to stop it from getting out."

"I- I'm sorry, I just-" She suddenly felt foolish for saying something. Of course there would be a proper reason.

"I know you woke up and decided that you were one of them, and one of them will always assume that we're the bad guys. But you need to wake up and realise that this is war, honey. This isn't some schoolyard disagreement that you need to correct and provide your moral opinions on. We are in the enemy's military base, where they've been growing the disease that had quite literally stopped the rest of the world. This is not the time for you to be playing games."

Anna finished her little speech a little softer than how she had started. She almost sounded concerned as she desperately clasped Emilia's hand. Emilia stared back at her friend. She nodded and mumbled a quick apology to her captain and to her superior officer.

Emilia looked down, ready to move on, but then Dominik slammed a thick document on the table.

"This is the jackpot. 'The complete genetic manipulations and mutations of Mycobacterium tuberculosum malignus', is the title of this file," he said with a silently proud expression crossing of his arms. "We go home with this, and we can find a cure."

Emilia then realised just how much she didn't know about TB84. Obviously, she had never been exposed to it, and hadn't heard that much about how the rest of the world was experiencing it. It made her utterly disappointed that Australia had done this. Was she happy that they now had the proof to expose these people... the bad guys?

"Fucking wonderful!" Anna mused in a loud whisper, relieved to be moving on to more pressing matters.

They shuffled around the room for another few minutes. Emilia kept to the corner, looking at everything Anna was unpacking. Perhaps she had been too quick to assume that Australia would never do something like this. Perhaps her teammates were right when they ranted and raved about the unfairness of their burden. The last week had been the most confusing thing she was sure she had ever experienced, but this was a whole new level.