The Protection Program

TPP : Chapter LVII

Hell was now a place on earth, but Nina honestly felt like she was the only one feeling that way.

She already had rubbing burn marks on her wrists from way to tight hand cuff restraints. It was day 3 out of 91 and she had already lost a few pounds, the food was horrible and the smell of the entire building made her throw up twice on day one. Today was the day Nina got to go outside, it was like work shifts, only 6 groups outside at one time and today, Nina's group was one of those 6.

"LETS GO! GET UP, MAKE YOUR BEDS, BRUSH YOUR TEETH! YOU KNOW THE ROUTINE! SPRAT I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO COME TELL YOU AGAIN!"

Sprat was the only other girl in the purple group, she was older then Nina but not over 30. She had a nasty attitude but surprisingly she wasn't to mean to Nina, most likely because she was a female as well. This was Sprat's third time being in the program, her attitude brought her back because nobody could handle it.

She rolled off of her stone cold cot and pulled the paper thin blanket up quickly. The tooth paste tasted like plastic but it was better then not brushing your teeth at all.

It was warm outside, not to hot but not to cold. Warm. Comfortable. Except for when they started to do work, it got hot and they all began to sweat bullets. All it took was one person to mess up and then they all had to run 6 laps around the building, which was huge by the way.

Nina didn't mind though, she enjoyed running, she would rather do that then do yard work and community service. She felt free when she ran, even though she was locked up in an enclosure like a zoo animal, she felt free.

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His stomach hurt, his head hurt, his body hurt. Everything hurt. Mainly because he was going through a three day hangover and the only way he knew how to cure it at the moment was to drink more. He felt like an alcoholic which he wasn't, yeah he enjoyed drinking but he wasn't one to sit and binge drink.

He had a bar inside of his condo stocked with the finest products of alcoholic liquid and now there wasn't much of anything but dust inside the cabinets.

You could tell he had put on weight from the non stop drinking and eating of unhealthy things but he didn't care, he wasn't trying to impress anyone. He was the talk of the office as usual but instead it wasn't positive, they were negative for once and that only seemed to tear him down even more.

When at work he didn't participate in anything, he had meetings and conferences that he created himself and he didn't even attend them. He had a meeting with the mayor coming up later on in the week and he really wanted to cancel but he was the mayor, as much as he wanted to, he couldn't.

There was a photo of Nina still in his desk drawer, way back from when Steve first came to ask if he wanted to be apart of the program. He found himself staring at it more then often and that made it worse too. It made him miss her more, it made him feel like a complete ass because he had made a promise to her.

He ran his finger across the smooth surface of her photo as his heart cracked a little more, a knock on his office door took him from his thoughts so he sucked it up and tossed the photo into the desk drawer.

"Come in."

Sooner then later a Mr. Oliver Khatib walked in and he was the last person Aubrey wanted to see. He mentally rolled his eyes as his long time friend plopped down in the chair across from him.

"I think you should make music again."

He nearly choked on the growing lump in his throat at the sound at what he just said. It wasn't bad or anything, just shocking. Oliver was happy that Aubrey wanted to go into business and ditch the music thing because Oliver thought his intellectuality would make for a good businessman, now he wanted him to leave that all behind.

"Excuse me?"

"I think you should still continue with business and helping other people, but I think getting back into music would spruce things up. Switch it up a little."

He swallowed down the spit that naturally formed in his mouth but only felt like it came right back up due to the knot in his throat. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get Nina out of his mind and it was slowly but surely killing him.