Disconnect

Chapter 7

     After your rather uncomfortable dinner, your parents showed you to the room opposite theirs. They told you that you would be staying here for the duration of the trip, and when you asked how long that would be, they told you that you would be here for two more days. It was a nice room, very similar to Tessa’s minus the decorations. The only decorations in this room were to make it match the rest of the manor. So now you lay on this, admittedly comfortable, bed, and stare at the ceiling.
     “Two days,” you sigh to yourself.
     You didn’t want to leave now that you were here. You wanted to see the drones back home, sure, but you’ve started to make friends here too. You wished there was some way to remedy this pulling in two directions, but there just isn’t. Best you can do is have fun while you’re here, and hope Tessa wants to stay in touch. She barely looked at you during dinner, and when she did, she would either avert her eyes like nothing happened, or just give a very forced smile. The thought that she might be mad at you makes you uneasy. You really enjoyed your time together, and if it was over already, the next two days were going to be very awkward. Especially so if your parents do that weird thing again where they just shove the two of you together. You were going to think more on why they seemed so pressed to get the two of you to get along, but the thought was interrupted by the door to your room slowly being creaked open.
     “Psst, heeeey. (Y/N)? You awake?,” a voice from behind the door calls out. It sounds familiar.
     “N?,” you guess.
     N sticks his head into your room, surveys the area, then looks at you. He gives a goofy smile and continues to whisper, “We’re going to play some more in Tessa’s room. You in?”
     Aw yis. You hop off your temporary bed, slide your shoes on, and remember to bring your jacket and game system just in case. You meet him at the door seconds after, “Aw yeah.”
     You and N creep through the manor as to not wake your parents, and when their room is out of earshot, to not alert any of the workers not in on the game night. It would be easy for N to walk by undetected since he’s a worker too, but you were effectively being smuggled from one side of the manor to the other. As the two of you got closer to Tessa’s room, N stopped sneaking as much and began to stroll with quiet footsteps.
     “We should be good from here. We usually try to avoid going near people’s rooms at night to avoid waking anyone up,” N explains.
     “Makes sense. How often do you guys do this?,” you inquire.
     “Like hang out at night? Usually it depends on if Tessa wants to sleep or not. Sometimes she just wants to go to bed early, but every once in a while she gets us all together when the sun goes down to keep us company,” N eventually stops in front of what you recognize to be Tessa’s room.
     “That sounds pretty cool. Being able to hang out with your friends all the time sounds like a dream come true,” you try to bury any jealousy you may feel at the thought.
     N gives a wide smile before reaching for the door handle, “Ha. You get it. Tessa’s awesome. It's great to make a new friend for myself too. J will warm up to you eventually, but I think Cyn already has. V thinks you’re nice too, so we agree on that.”
     He opens the door and inside you see Tessa, J, V, and Cyn sitting in a circle. Whatever they were talking about seems to have stopped when the door opened.
     “Bugger. The boys are here, funs over,” Tessa playfully jeers.
     With a false indignant tone in your voice, you retort, “You’re the one who wanted me here!”
     “Must’ve been a different Tessa,” she shrugs.
     You scoff, keeping the display up since the room seemed to be finding it funny, “As if the world could handle two of you.”
     “It’d be a better place if there were,” she puffs out her chest a bit.
     You genuinely chuckle at the display, “For you maybe. I don’t think I could handle handing weird tools to two overzealous robo doctors at once.”
     Tessa tries and fails to stifle a laugh as she speaks, “‘Robo doctors?’ They’re just called technicians.”
     “Look, I have genuinely never seen half of the things in that little box you have. It’s all Greek to me,” you try to wave her off as you near the circle of girls. You look for a place to sit, but no space is open. J gives you a look that screams ‘I’m not moving.’ V scootches over to give you a seat next to Tessa, and subsequently gives N a place in between her and Cyn. You thank her and she gives a polite nod of the head.
     “So what are we doing?,” you ask, eager to spend time with your new friends again.
     “I got an idea,” Tessa says with a mischievous look on her face, “Treasure hunt.”
     The room got quiet for a moment, but you wanted clarification, “Treasure hu-”
     “Head tilt,” Cyn unintentionally interrupts.
     You decide not to comment on it, “What’s ‘treasure hunt?’”
     Tessa proudly holds up a few pieces of folded paper she got from her pockets, “Simple! We’ll separate into teams of two! Then we’ll all take a gander at our individual lists, and try to collect the items listed. The harder the item is to find, the more points it's worth. The team with the most points wins!”
     “That…actually sounds kinda fun, but aren’t we supposed to be asleep around now? How do we not get caught?,” you ask, not wanting to get in trouble as a guest.
     “Boss has already figured that part out,” J interjects, “Most of the staff will be entering sleep mode here pretty soon. After that we should be in the clear so long as you don’t wake anyone up.”
     “Oh,” you feel a little dumb for thinking that they might have forgotten so obvious, “But don’t you have to power down eventually too?”
     N waves dismissively, “Psh, we already went into power save mode for the day, so we can do an all nighter. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”
     “You going to be right for this?,” Tessa asks you, looking excited to start.
     You give a thumbs up, “Yeah, I’m good. I actually napped for a while before I started traveling today, so I’m not that tired.”
     “Then let's get into teams!,” Tessa raises an arm like she was rallying an army. She points at you, “It’s you and me.” She points a finger at N and V, “You two.” Her hands wave towards J and Cyn, who were sitting across from each other, “You two make the last team.”
     You didn’t have much to say on the matter. As long as you weren’t left alone with J, you didn’t mind who you were with. You didn’t hate her, it’s just that you don’t think she cares for you very much. You haven’t really gotten to know V very well and would like to talk to her more. N has been a real bro so far, even if he is a bit of a goober. Cyn was nice, but you feel like she would still be a little wary of you, being as shy as she is. N and V both looked happy, if a bit nervous, about their pairing. They had those lines under their eyes again. Now that you take a good look at the lines, they kinda remind you of those anime pictures you see online sometimes. They usually draw someone blushing with similar lines. Who programs stuff like that? Unfortunately, not everyone was so happy with the pairings.
     “Arm cross,” Cyn emotes her actions while her screen displays a very unhappy expression.
     J shares in the discontent, but seems less mad, and more upset. She mumbles to herself, “Am I getting demoted?”
     “Hey, what’s all this then?,” Tessa asks the pair.
     While Tessa talks things over with J and Cyn, you decide that now is a good time to ask N what that whole deal is about, and potentially get to know V better. You carefully and quietly remove yourself from the area and make your way to N and V. You take a seat behind them, “Mind filling me in on what’s going on?”
     They both turn to face you, and N begins, “Well… J and Cyn don’t really get along. They just don’t see eye to eye.”
     “Why?,” you question further.
     “Well,” V began, “J and Tessa are very close. Cyn was only recently rescued from the…” She shakes her head to make the memory of that place go away, “As you’ve probably realized, Cyn needs special attention with some things. Because of that, Tessa spends a lot of time with her, making J feel left out.” She covers her mouth in surprise, “I don’t mean to say it’s J’s fault. Her feeling that way is reasonable, I think. She’s- I mean we’re all grateful to Tessa for taking us in, but J is very loyal. I’d even say she's very attached to Tessa.”
     “And she thinks Cyn is a threat to that?,” you ask.
     “That feels like a mean way to put it, but…,” N searches for the right words, but can’t seem to find them.
     You understand the situation a bit better now. J’s like a rescued dog who gets very attached to their owner, but lashes out at anything it perceives as a threat to keep them safe. You never questioned it before, but it must be terrifying for the drones that Tessa fixes. You haven’t even considered that there was a life for them before they got repaired that led up to them being thrown out, and eventually brought here.
     You can’t help but look at J differently, “That must have been awful for her to act like this now…”
     N looks down sadly, but V looks at you with a smile. It seems that what you’ve said made her happy, or even relieved. You didn’t have time to ask her why she responded that way, as it seems that Tessa, J, and Cyn were about to come to an end of their conversation. It’d be best to pay attention to how this is resolved.
     “I’d like to request a department transfer,” J pleads with Tessa.
     Tessa thinks for a retort, but can't seem to find the words, “J…”
     You see Tessa struggling so you decide to chime in, “Tessa, I don’t mind changing teams. If Cyn’s ok with it that is.” You look at Cyn, who has her LED eyes half closed in thought.
     “Nervous nod, That would be fine,” she nods her head, having to use her hand to guide the action.
     Tessa seems to visibly deflate as she lets out a sigh that empties her lungs, “Then J and I will be a team, and (Y/N) and Cyn will be the other.”
     “So when are we starting?,” you ask, eager to play some games and break some rules. You know, normal teenager things.