Broken

Chapter 20

The next day I found myself seated at a rather large table surrounded by brown, leather office chairs, fiddling with the edge of a file folder that had been given to me about five minute before. Either side of me sat Eric and Greyson, both wearing their most threatening looks- even if their boyishly handsome faces reduced the effect a little- directed at the men seated across the table from us.

I wasn't in the best shape still, so I appreciated their support. Though, I wasn't sure if it was the wisest decision to be glaring at agents from the Raider Association like that... Carson, who was sitting at the head of the table, just sighed at their antics. I supposed the guild master was even more used to dealing with them the even I was.

In the end, I had complied with Carson's request and agreed to spend my time at the Chaos Guild's headquarters. At least until the heat blew over. They had been right that the public wouldn't take long to track me down either. We went to my apartments and I gathered the things Yejun and I would need for a couple weeks, but we had just barely made it to their multi- story guild building when news broke about where I lived.

I watched, bundled up in the apartment Carson had given me, as the reporters swarmed my apartment building.

All yesterday the twins had locked themselves in the apartment with me and threatened bodily harm to anyone who dared to even approach the door. We stayed in there, and I brokenly told them a few vague details about what happened during the Selection. I cried... a lot. Then I ate a little, cried some more. I managed to laugh a little at the television as the reporters questioned my neighbors. I hadn't even realized that the girl in 2A was my 'best friend', nor that the old lady I sometimes said 'hi' to on my way to work thought that 'she was the devil incarnate! You could see it in her eyes!!'. And then bawled my eyes out some more.

I managed to get some sleep amongst all that. Though, calling it sleep might have been a stretch. Even 'rest' was probably too extreme a word for the stuttered hours of nightmare fueled shut-eye I got. Still, Eric and Greyson stuck with me through it all, even curling up next to me at night when images of heads flying off peoples shoulders haunted me. It could have been awkward, but it wasn't. I was just grateful, to be honest. These two were putting up with an awful lot of emotional baggage for a girl they had only met a couple months ago.

However, after all the distress they had seen me go through yesterday, they were in super over protective mode now. I sat between them with a pale face and red, swollen eyes as Officer Warren Trench got down to business.

He and the two other unnamed Association reps had just arrived to debrief me. I supposed that seeing me leave the Awakening Center with the Chaos guild it wasn't a stretch to believe that this was where they could find me.

Warren Trench was a good looking guy in his early thirties with strawberry blonde hair and hard green eyes. He wore a blue suit, but I could tell by the way he moved and held himself that he was a raider, even if he didn't venture into the instances any more, in favor of a government job. It also said something that he didn't appear intimidated at all by the twins either. They were relatively high ranked raiders and were currently staring death rays at him, yet Trench seemed unfazed.

"So you need me to tell you what happened during the Selection?" I asked for clarification. He had wasted no time getting to the point after Carson brought us all to the Guild's meeting room, which I appreciated. The faster I got this done and over with, the better.

Officer Trench nodded, his stern eyes locked on me. "There is no need to go into the difficult details, Miss Brogan. But the Association requests that you tell us all you can in regards to the Higher Power you encountered during the Selection. As I am sure you know, we have only limited information about these beings."