Relinquished ✯ OliverxReader ✯

9. bedtime

October 29th, 2045

7 P.M

(y/n)

"Y/n."

I turned to Isabella who had called out my name. She was carrying a little one in her arms. "Please find a clean tablecloth. There was an incident with one of the children."

I nearly scrunched my nose. Back at Lambda, incidents meant that a child had died, and not in the most eye-pleasing way. Nonetheless, I put that behind me and nodded. "Of course."

I headed out the dining hall and went upstairs, to the storage room with all of the extra sheets. Yet as I was coming out of the storage room, I heard some hushed voices that sounded an awful lot like Ray. I understand that Sister Krone was scolded for meddling in Isabella's business, and I'm sure I would be scolded as well if I involved myself. If I got caught. However, I can listen for as long as I want to if I don't get caught. That's what Sister Krone failed to do.

So I snuck closer to the door the voices were coming from, the library.

"It's true," Ray said, a little hint of masking in his voice.

"What? So what about Mom?" Asked a voice that sounded like Don, bewilderment and fear laced in his voice.

Emma, I think, sighed. "She's selling us to bad people.

"Take it back Emma. Be reasonable, there's no way Mom would ever do that to us!" Don started, raising his voice.

"Don," a new voice said. It was Gilda. "Emma loves Mom and this house just as much as we do. Why would she ever make up such a story? To be honest, I thought it was strange. The night that Conny left, Emma and Norman both went to the gate. In such a scenario, even if they broke the rules, they would come clean about it, but...you haven't done that.

"I wanted to ask you about it, Emma. But I was too afraid to say anything, and I..." She started to cry before she could continue. "Did you see it happen? Did you guys see Conny sold off to the bad people?"

"Yeah," Norman spoke. "Unfortunately, we didn't make it in time." I scowled. If they truly wanted to get more people to trust them, maybe going with the story of being 'sold off to bad people' was the way to go. At least not in the long run. If you really think about it, a story with that many holes is bound to cause problems.

"Is Conny safe?" Don asked.

"I don't know," Norman instantly replied.

"This isn't real," Don exclaimed. "There's just no way."

There was a little silence before Norman spoke once again. "I'm not sure if this proves much, but both Emma and Ray spent the past few days looking into everybody's test scores. "According to this, kids below six are adopted in order of lowest scores first."

"It's just like Norman said," Gilda mumbled.

"Don, Gilda," Emma said. "Please, help us escape. If we all work together, I'm sure we can do it."

There were a couple of footsteps and I jolted up. I didn't realize I had placed my ear against the door until now. I quietly scurried away and headed down the stairs, pretending I had not just overheard anything.

I set the brand new tablecloth over the table and was smoothing it down when one of the littles approached me and tugged on my skirt.

"Yes, Alicia?" I asked the little blond five-year-old carrying a striped tiger stuffy.