Frostbite (Mindgames #1)

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Sentience

The four of us got onto the bus for the ride back to the DSO warehouse, the bus was mainly empty, and the very few people that were inside were scattered as far apart from each other as the bus could physically manage.

There were about ten people on the long bus. I slowly made my way into the bus and eventually went to sit in an empty seat. I felt Stephanie sit beside me, but she did not look at me. I was tense, the whole situation felt odd.

I watched Aaron and Felix sit down quietly across the aisle of the bus. I glanced over at the bus driver, who was staring straight ahead at the road. I tried to think for a moment, trying to get some semblance of peace, even if it was for a little moment.

Stephanie looked at me, I could tell from the corner of my gaze that she seemed to have a look of worry. I wanted to know what was wrong, but I also felt that maybe it was not my place. Maybe, she was attempting to decipher the thoughts going through her head like I was at that moment.

I took a deep breath, and looked over at her, making eye contact to try and prompt a conversation without outright asking. I wanted to at least try and help. "Are you okay?" Stephanie asked me, breaking the silence as she managed to gain her confidence. I did not respond for a moment, I looked back forward to the bus seat back in front of me, the shiny gray plastic having nothing interesting to land my gaze upon, before looking back at her.

"Right now, I am okay," I replied, trying to give a reassuring smile to ease her nerves. "You seem tense," I added, trying to get her to speak.

"I am," She replied, "I'm tense because I wonder if this has all been a scheme." She said, looking ahead as she watched the road from the driver's windshield.

The bus was turning on and soon chugging along down the street as the passersby became less dense in population. I looked back at Stephanie, scanning her face and exposed skin for any sign of injury, before returning my gaze with eye contact.

"A scheme?" I asked softly as she nodded in response. "How do you mean?" I asked, I glanced over at Felix and Aaron, who had sat across the aisle from us.

Aaron was facing straight ahead sitting in the window seat with his hands in his lap, he did not seem like the people-watching type to me, so this made sense. Felix however, also had his hands in his lap, but he was picking at the cuticles in the nail bed of each finger, like he was nervous about being on public transportation.

I took a deep breath, as Stephanie spoke, I wanted to hear her."It's not logical for someone to have entirely bad things happen to them right?" Stephanie asked me. "Sometimes people have bad luck, yes, but I do not think it can be chronic?" I replied, my mind confused about what train of thought she was going for.

"Your mother's murder, my sister's kidnapping, your father's unconfirmed 'death', your sister's kidnapping and retrieval. Our combined bad luck surely is not completely up to fate." Stephanie said, her eyes filled with desperation as she tried to get me to understand her point of view. I did understand her point of view, it was just that it would be nearly impossible to explain to her, what William had explained to me within thirty minutes. I continued to let her rant about what she was thinking, wanting her to feel like she was being listened to and heard.

"Everyone says that the keepers work in mysterious ways, how everyone has a plan for them that will either end up being historically changing or what they deserve. Are we the latter half or the former half?" Stephanie questioned gently. "If we are the second half of that statement, what did we do to deserve the life we have? What good or what bad did we do to deserve the torment we have gone through?" Stephanie continued to ramble, she was spiraling a bit, trying to rationalize all the hell she had gone through in that moment.