Children's Games: A Story of Modern Punishment

Chapter 49 - Emilia

~Emilia~

Emilia closed the smooth white door behind her and leaned against it as she took in the feel of the lab. She didn't like splitting up with Bonnie and strangely didn't like splitting up with Elliot for different reasons. At first, the separation from Elliot made her feel vulnerable being without someone who knew the ins and outs of the building. But as her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room, she realised that they would be just fine.

The lab was just as she'd remembered it. Blue linoleum floors, white benches, and computers at every station with expertise in every bioinformatics database available. It was just like the memory from her dream, the night she left and never came back. But instead of smelling sterile with disinfectant and ethanol, it smelled musty and old from misuse. It was closer to looking like the abandoned secret lab underneath the warehouse.

The others started flowing throughout the room, watching Emilia over their shoulders for instructions.

"We're looking for anything about the disease. Or a cure," Jonny answered for her. They all set to work silently.

Loic zipped straight to a computer while the others filed through draws and quickly scanned the documents for keywords and decided in under a minute whether to put it in their bag or leave it. Loic gave up on the computer pretty quickly as he couldn't find a way on... leaving Emilia to gravitate towards her old station in the far corner of the room and sit on her old seat.

The computer needed a fingerprint, which she delivered with flying colours. Then it requested a face ID... she pulled down her scarf and brushed the hair from her face. Then it requested a password. Emilia stared blankly at the bright screen. Time ticked past with her fingers hovering over the keyboard... and typed out a six-number code.

"Fuck yeah," she mumbled under her breath with a victorious smile. The screen opened up with a million files, all named in codes rather than words. Everyone else in the room looked at her small victory, and her confidence was suddenly restored enough to lead them.

She told Loic to look for the disease progression logs, Nova to find the old invoice and inventory records, Hendrix to look for the list of lab employees, and Jonny to find the manual for Mycobacterium tuberculosum malignus. And she told them all the exact draw, cabinet, or cupboard they could be found in.

The gears in her head didn't fit, but they were moving and somehow it made sense. She received a quick nod before each of them dove back to work and she moved back to her computer, opening every application that looked familiar until she found the ordinary computer files.

Her file was called EAR, her initials. She opened the folder and was about to start searching for keywords when she noticed the digital signatures on the first page. Signed by the prestigious and infamous Nina Doberman and cosigned by her proud daughter and prodigy Emilia A. Reid.

She froze, exhaling deeply at the reminder. Right... it's my mother's lab... Nina is my mother... Elliot was right. Why do I keep forgetting them? she thought to herself. It was like she had forgotten about that single devastating fact, like she had shut it out of her mind... She wanted to scream at Elliot for not telling her that the villain, Nina, was her mother, but of course, he had told her.

"She was the head scientist for the government's secret labs... secret experiments... you worked with her." But then again, Emilia also remembered the dream she'd had when she was quarrelling with her mother in this very building, followed by her escaping with Alice... It was like there was a mental block trying to keep her remembering these key things. Guilt, anxiety, something didn't want her to remember.

The uneasiness that settled in her stomach was more about keeping the information hidden from the others. She had no idea how they would react if it was written anywhere in the places she had instructed them to look. She gulped and tried to stay focused, scrolling past the first page.