Gifted - SERIOUS EDITING, REVISION, and other writer stuff GOING ON!

Chapter Ten

He stood there in the doorway. His eyes never left me and I became cautious of everything that I could possibly do wrong. Ashton was on lookout duty for any night officers. Why I trusted him, I had no idea. I just needed help. If I could have Rachel over Ashton, I would. Even Daniel. The computer was still rebooting after five minutes. Technology wasn't really my thing and I became frustrated easily.

"So what happened to your door?" He called from the other side of the room. Checking the hallway once more, he closed the door. Leaving us with one light lit up, he crossed over to the stairs, and sat. Like always. My only answer was the shrug. It hadn't fazed me that someone had broken into my room, looking for whatever they needed. Nothing was missing.

"Are you gonna get it fixed?" I shrugged again. "Are you gonna do anything besides shrug?" Why was he asking all these questions? What's his problem?

"Are you gonna do anything besides interrogate me?" Annoyance and anger rested in my voice. A little embarrassed at the heat rising in my cheeks, I quickly returned to the screen. Which had just started showing the homepage. The paper was crumbled in the pocket on my thigh. Flattening it out in my hand I just stared at the words.

Why the hell did I care about this ship anyway? Whatever was going to happen to it? Why did I just now start trusting whatever "visions" happened to me? Since when did I trust people? Why was I so drawn to this? Lots of questions.

"Computer," The screen lit up in response to my voice, "Operations Overseas." Those last words came out forced and small. It buzzed, whirred, and then stopped. A swirling of blue squares ran around the screen. One file popped up. One freaking file.

"Computer," His voice called from behind me. It sent an ice cold chill down my spine, "Open file."

The file contained an official looking paper, and a photograph from what looked like 2006. As if I thought the answers would be right there. Of course the paper was scratched off. I mean what else did you expect? Moving closer to the screen, it slowly hummed. Then it blinked red. System Override. Just like that the documents were gone. And the screen went black.

"What the hell?" My hands flew exasperatedly in the air.

"Whatever you're trying to find, someone obviously doesn't want it to be found." He just looked at me. "Plus, why do you care anyway?"

"I-" I began and couldn't seem to find the answer. All he did was wait. Why couldn't I answer him? "Look, I have-"

"What? A feeling, a gut feeling that something might be happening to this ship?" He was angry. And annoyed. As he was about to continue I became frustrated as well. The heat began to run through my body.

"Episodes!" I screamed. "I have episodes." My voice was drastically small at the end. He didn't respond. Ashton just stood there. Mentally adding him to the list of people who think I am crazy/hate me, I excused myself. It's not a gut feeling, it's real. If technology won't help me, then I'm going to have to do this old school. Through files.

The door creaked to the Main Frame, it was nearly vacant. Someone was sitting at their computer, not moving. They seemed to be asleep, and they had fallen onto a certain key. It just kept on typing. Moving past them quietly, as though not to disturb them, it was fairly easy to get into the file room; it was unlocked actually. Slipping in and shutting the door quickly I was greeted with the rows of steel cabinets.

Where did you put the file? Think. Searching the labels for an 'N' or an 'S', maybe even a Naval Ship 376 if they wanted to make it easy. But I couldn't quite remember if I had placed it back in its file, or placed it on the table. Walking over to the table to try and find it, it was covered in papers and folders. A little internal groan and I were searching through each file. On the corner of the table I saw a dusty outline of a folder.