Capturing Ella

Chapter 48 - Eleanor

It's been a long day, without you my friend.

And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again,

We've come a long way from where we began,

Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again,

When I see you again.

I sat at the dining bar in a rustic old restaurant in the middle of nowhere, eating the plate of southern fried chips that were conveniently in front of me. I had no recollection as to how I got here, or even who the chips were – but hey, they were mine now. Picking up another chip I bit it in half, looking around the restaurant. Two people sat in the corner, huddling over a milkshake. The style of the diner wasn't as rustic as I had originally anticipated, but was more eighties diner style. Little booths sat with their leather red sofas and laminated menus standing on the table, with an oval door. I frowned, realising where I was.

Near the FBI building in Denver, which was effectively a normal office blocks to blend in there was a little 80's diner called Tina's drivers which Vick and I always used to dip into when we were working on something together. I had found the place completely by mistake, being too busy projecting to another place and walking into the diner thinking it was the office lobby. Since then, it had become our little joint for reconciliation when I probably stormed out yelling at him for some reason. Mainly because he would piss me off or kept nagging me and I got irritated too easily. I ate the rest of my fry, frowning. Normally the joint would play eighties music – the soundtrack to Fast and Furious 7, especially "See you Again" was very disjointed and didn't sound quite right. It was almost like the song had hidden meanings to an alternative situation but my brain wouldn't allow me to connect the dots. As soon as I focused on anything apart from the allusive diner my brain absolutely killed.

'How have you been?' Uriel asked, nicking one of my chips. I turned back around on my spiny chair and frowned at him. Where did he come from?

'I've been good,' I simply said, grabbing another chip from the pile.

'Just good?' Vick asked, and I turned to my left where he was sitting in his favourite grey suit, frowning at me.

'I've been absolutely fine – why the sudden concern?' I asked.

'You're not in a very good state, Ella, not in a very good state at all.' Trace again, sitting next to Uri mixing his chocolate milkshake in the tall glass with the long latte-styled spoon. 'We're not actually here, you know that right?'

'What do you mean you're not here? You clearly are, stop winding me up.' I argued back, eating another chip.

'She's failed the Mariiak perspective test,' Will commented, nudging Vick and gesturing to the plate of fries, as they call chips in America, that had appeared in front of him. Vick rolled his eyes at Will before pushing the plate over. Mariiak's perspective test was fairly new and an expansive concept in the medical and psychological world. I knew what it was, but it was never used or was unable to get any collective data from tests so it remained a theory as oppose to a solid solution. Mariiak suggested that people who are deeply unconscious stick around in made up mental stability solutions, almost in a hallucination to prevent their brain from knowing the danger they are in. Not only that, the Mariiak solution states that you should be able to pick up the changes in the data field, the hallucination, if you're in a good state to recover. If the fail the test, your brain is already fried and you cannot interpret data correctly meaning the individual would have brain damage.

'We're just in Tina's having lunch, this isn't a Mariiak's solution?' I questioned.

'Think about it more closely Ella,' Yves commented, standing behind the diner's bar, making himself his own milkshake. He had always been impatient for service. 'What are you eating?'