For A Star To Fall

Chapter 26: Red Dots and White Squares

Chapter 26

"What about Dr. Valin’s assistant? Will he pose as an obstacle?" Emyle asked. Jordan decided that he did not like the glint in her eyes when she uttered the second question. It was a dangerous light and implied things--a suggestion of something dark and deadly.

"Seth?" he said, not wanting him to be put in the line of fire, but telling the truth anyways. "Maybe, I guess. He looks to Dr. Valin as a kind of father figure, but we all do. Before he came here, rumor has it that he was an orphan, just another homeless kid on the streets. He was tough though, and lived a hard life. That was until Dr. Valin came across him. I'm not really sure how, but he saw something in him, a spark that others didn't have, maybe. So he realized that Seth was smart and took him under his wing. Same thing as me, I guess," he shrugged. "Except for the fact that Dr. Valin raised him personally, like his own kid, so Seth is closer to him than I am." 

Emyle looked at him and the glint in her eyes flared once and disappeared, like a flame being snuffed out. "You are still envious of him," she observed. 

Jordan hesitated. This was the second time she had told him this. Was she correct? Nah, he could not be jealous of him. "Not exactly," he began carefully. "Seth's been here longer than I have and he's older than me too, so I guess it's only fair. Dr. Valin took him in and trained him. He kind of invested in him, I think. If that's true then Seth's a really good investment, really. With all that experience under his belt now, he's now managing practically everything in the facility when Dr. Valin isn't around. It's like he's more of a partner in the company than an assistant..." He trailed off wistfully. 

Raising an eyebrow, Emyle looked him in the eye for a moment. With a sigh, Jordan waved his hand vaguely, like he was pushing the topic away. He shifted in his seat and moved the mouse. The map of the facility onscreen zoomed in at his command. He tried to change the subject, saying, "Okay, we've basically covered everything. You know how to get to Dr. Valin's private labs, right?"

She nodded confidently. "I've looked at it for more than a minute already. I can remember the entire image now."

Jordan hummed, leaning back in his chair.  He had already given up wanting to know how she did that stuff. It was crazy and mad and absolutely brilliant. Maybe she had taken supplements or something? He thought. But that was doubtful, because her dad would have had to give them to her and he probably would have been against that, since most of the supplements on the market were manufactured by Lumiere Biopharms. Then her amazing memory would have to be an inborn talent. That was cool, he thought, really cool. "Right," he clicked on the label at the top-right hand corner of the screen, making red dots appear seemingly randomly on the map, "now that we've discussed Seth and other even more irrelevant stuff, let's go back to something a bit more important, shall we?"

He moved the arrow to one of the red dots, scratching his head with his free hand. "So I kind of hacked into the security system in the facility and I got this. This red dot represents one guard. They're all stationed like this, but some of them patrol, and those aren't shown here, I think, because there are definitely more guards hanging around than just these. We just need to figure out a way to get past them. Once we wrap this up, it should be smooth sailing from then on."

She nodded, black eyes sharp and observant as they looked intently at the screen. A few seconds passed, and Jordan started to become uncomfortable. It was rather hard to concentrate with her leaning over him like this so she could look at the laptop screen. He cleared his throat after a while. "How about this route? It's take us past the guards on this corridor and the ones here too. We should be fine after that, right?" He moved the white arrow so that it traced a line from their current position to their intended destination.