Children's Games: A Story of Modern Punishment

Chapter 39 - Emilia

~Emilia~

Emilia wandered out of the apartment and sat at the head of the large oval table in the three-thirty-second's conference room. It was there that she rested both hands on the cold surface and inhaled deeply, a feeling of selfish satisfaction resting on her shoulders.

Jonny had fallen asleep and there was only so much of the shitty book she had been reading that she could take. It had become slightly stuffy and warm, and the rest of the warehouse empty of warm bodies was cool and refreshing.

She looked around the large room filled with many desks, yet of course, only six were piled high with random things of sentiment. She could feel it in the air that they were about to undergo another drastic change, especially if they were going to be moving away from Orlando. She wondered if their work was going to be put on hold, if there would be a chance for people to stay behind... she didn't want to follow the others like a herd of sheep. She liked where their work was going, however hopeful, as Jonny put it when they first met.

They had another hour before they needed to meet back in the city to go back to the bunker. She decided to go for a walk to stretch her legs and brighten her face. She had stopped her petty tears hours ago, but her eyes still looked glassy, and her nose and cheeks remained red.

"Emi! I've been looking for you everywhere," Elliot called as she stepped out of the office and into the main space of the warehouse.

"E-Elliot. Hi." She was surprised to see him, assuming that he would've still been at the Home building. "W-what brings you here?"

"I live here. I've been thinking about what we talked about. And I know how to fix all of... this," he said quickly, gesturing to her. "Come on."

Emilia tuned out as he spoke over his shoulder while walking through the warehouse. He looked kind of angry, passive-aggressively waving around and slapping his hand on the sides of his thigh waiting for her to catch up. It was a more active form of the disappointed person he was before they went down in the bunker. She was feeling tired, and reluctant to listen to much more of what he had to say. We can't live in the past anymore.

He was waiting out the front of a set of double doors that had a broken exit sign on top. He held the doors open to reveal a stairwell curving downwards.

"Hey. What are you wearing?" he asked as he looked her up and down. She peeled her eyes at him, but then he quickly shook his head and entered through the door himself. "Never mind. Come on."

She looked down at her clothes, the ones she was wearing earlier, and had worn every day in the bunker. But she had thrown on Jonny's big coat that he always wore. The sleeves were very loose on her new tattoo. It was under a few layers of cling wrap and already seeping a mixture of clear liquid mixed with excess black ink. Putting too much pressure on it was less than 'adequate', he'd insisted in a heavily posh accent.

But Emilia sighed anyway, reluctantly following her brother as he called out again for her to hurry up, paired with an array of swear words he was trying to say quietly but was failing miserably.

"I didn't know this stuff was down here..." she said slowly as she entered the large room colder than a refrigerator, forsaken and forgotten compared to the rest of the warehouse readily used. A chill stuck in her spine as Elliot stood with his arms wide, gesturing to the million-dollar room behind him.

"It's why this warehouse was picked to conduct their international business. It was a secret military station, and with every one of those, of course there'd be a secret laboratory."

The lab hadn't been used for years, filled with outdated equipment... six years old and untouched. It felt like a tomb, cobwebs strung across every corner and cranny, the once white benches hidden under dust making them grimy and grey. A fuming chamber sat in the centre of the room, glass cloudy and cracked. She shivered, a motion that had nothing to do with the deathly temperature. It looked forsaken and forgotten... until now. Elliot chose a bench and started taking things out of a rusted cupboard.