NUMB

Day Eleven - Jet

I've never really imagined myself as the type of person who would dig through other people's things just to satisfy my curiosity, but you can surprise yourself sometimes. I hadn't intended on going snooping during my break today. Honestly, I wanted to see if I could find Tasha and talk to her about some things that I've been wondering about this place. She wasn't in the infirmary though. There really wasn't much of anyone in the infirmary when I showed up, so it was almost like the rooms were asking me to be looked through.

Which is how I currently find myself going through the contents of the drawers in an empty patient room. I also managed to sneak my phone in with me today. They aren't allowed while we're on shift. I usually leave mine in my car.

But I needed to have something to show the people in the group. Their reaction last night to me telling them about the Numb who have died since I've started working here, and that van with the bodies, was intense. They were furious, to say the least.

///

"Are you sure they were bodies?" Ewan, the older man from the first night, asked. The permanent wrinkle between his eyebrows deepened as he stared at me. Before I could answer, someone else was saying how I could have been mistaken. I must have been mistaken.

"I'm sure of what I saw. They were body bags," I said, my voice going soft at the end.

"Hana, your friend works there too. You've never heard anything about this before have you?"

The group looked over at Hana, the girl who had introduced Tasha to me. She looked uncomfortable to have everyone staring at her like that. "She's never said anything about it. But she's only there during the day usually. I don't know either. This is the first I'm hearing of it."

"Jet, you have to had made a mistake. It was late, you were tired. Laundry can look like bodies when you're already suspicious of everything going on in that place."

"I'd only been on shift for an hour tops when it happened," I told the group. "But I have another reason to believe they were body bags. I thought there would be some sort of news about it by now, but two kids died in there a few days ago. Some sort of altercation that ended badly."

Murmurs swept across the group. Too many people talking at once.

"Has anyone heard anything about families being notified of the death of their child?" Margo, the mother. She had tears in her eyes from the moment I started describing the van and the contents being loaded into it. I could only imagine how horrifying hearing something like that must be. There's a chance one of the Numb was her child.

"Nobody I know has been told anything," someone else answered.

"There hasn't been a single word about two of those kids dying in there."

"I haven't heard anything either!"

"This is outrageous."

"This can't be right."

More and more voices rose until the room was a din of voiced anger. I looked at Seth. He had his gaze fixed on the group and his arms crossed over his chest. Thinking.

///

It sucked having to tell those people about all that. I need proof. Hard evidence that things are being covered up here. If there's a problem, if something like a virus is spreading in here, then shouldn't the people in charge inform the parents? Shouldn't they be made aware that their child's life could be in danger in the one place they were supposed to be safest?

There's got to be something in here that will shed some light on these things.

I don't know what any of these papers are though. It's a lot of medical jargon. Statistics. Test results. I'm not a doctor. None of this means anything to me. But then, printed across the top of a page, the word antiviral. The page has a lot of meaningless things on it. Percentages and things that read like drug names, but I don't recognize any of them.

This could be important. I fold the piece of paper and the two underneath it into a small square and slip it between my belt and my pants. I pick up the next stack.

"Jet?"

I freeze. Gently set the stack of papers in my hand I had been flipping through back into the drawer where I had found them. Why? Why couldn't it have been Tasha? I turn and put on my best innocent smile. "Ari, hey." I didn't know she was even on shift right now.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Oh, just y'know, looking for something."

One eyebrow lifts and she doesn't even have to say anything for me to know she's not buying that at all. I don't know what else to say. We stare awkwardly at each other for a moment.

"Are you going to tell Beck?" I ask finally.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Not really, no."

"Then there's not much for me to tell him, is there?" She gives me a pointed look that has the hair on the back of my neck standing up. "Don't get caught again, Jet. Something like this will get you a trip straight out those gates with no return ticket."

///

The papers I borrowed turn out to be less helpful than I wanted them to be. I searched up the drug names online, but a lot of them didn't turn up any results and the ones that did weren't very helpful. The little information I'm able to gather leaves me feeling like something is off though. Something isn't right.

I don't think this shot is what they're passing it off to be. I don't think the things going on in the Compound are as simple as they're trying to make it seem. A viral outbreak. I have a theory though. And I'm going to find out what they're hiding and I'm going to expose this place for what it really is.