OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

Light of Day

Ben worried whether he'd made the right decision to involve the Quorum. 

He was wasting time with his fretting now, as they'd already launched a search party for Arturo, his helper bot, and his live-in home care assistant, Midge.

"Can you think of anything else?" Persephone asked him, her experienced eyes searching for answers. "Any clue to where they might have gone?"

"I'm sorry, no," Ben replied, pulled from his fretting. "They had another woman with them, the-"

"Architect?" Persephone finished. "Yes, we've been trying to locate her too. No one seems to have heard from any of them and we've scanned for them on Arc One."

Her words hung in the air, but he didn't need to reply. They obviously weren't on Arc City One.

A thin man, who Ben knew as Thomas, came into the room with care, hustling over to Persephone to bend down and whisper something in her ear. She perked up at the news and got up from the sleek chair she was sitting in.

Persephone gestured a refined hand in Ben's direction. "We've found something."

Ben stood up so fast he pushed the chair to teeter and topple backward. He turned to look down at his handiwork.

"It's fine." Persephone insisted in her quiet manner. "We'll have someone see to that. We're needed in the War Room."

That was a place that Ben had never had cause to step foot in. His meetings (of which there were few) were usually on the second or third floor of the Hub. 

The War Room was located in the squat governmental building in the second quadrant of the Arc Cities. While a traditional court system was a thing of the past, the democratized republic that the Arc Cities had chartered, needed a nucleus to conduct business. Officially the building was called nothing, but the citizens had taken to calling it the 'Hub.'

He hurried around the legs of the high-backed chair and down the length of the Quorum's conference table to follow them out the door. 

Ignoring the interested looks of bystanders in the hallway, Thomas swerved into a pair of doors that retracted before he could smack into them. 

It would be a plain conference room if it weren't for the huge bay of monitors piping footage of the Arc Cities, and the enormous table behind a glass wall. In the center stood four more members of the Quorum who glanced up with tense smiles as Persephone approached. 

Persephone's peach-hued robe swished over the ground as regally as she nodded to her compatriots. The elite group's expressions were twisted in a desperate panic. 

"It seems Arturo hitched a ride with someone," Robert informed them. "We have footage of them late last night at around midnight. It looks like they're bargaining with that man."

Robert pointed a weathered finger at one of the screens where Meg was standing with the individuals who had come to Ben's home the night before.

"Who is that?" Persephone asked, her eyes narrowing to get a better look.

"It's Harrison Reneaux." Regan (Mr. Marrow, as he was known to others below his station) spat between his teeth, his lips quirking in a sneer. "A thief."

"That man is a criminal?" Persephone looked at Regan critically, she wasn't in favor of casting preliminary judgments, and Ben liked that about her.

"He's a smuggler, so I've heard." Regan puffed. "Brings in objects from old Earth and charges absurd prices for them."

"Sounds like you have first-hand knowledge." Persephone continued with a smile. "Perhaps we should chat about that? What else do you know about this Mr. Reneaux?"

Regan knew his little hobby could get him in hot water, as he hadn't exactly used his own money to purchase most of his treasures. Ben had consulted over Arc City One's budgets for the past thirty years, and everyone in this room knew that Mr. Marrow had been caught up in too many scandals to count. 

Usually, they buried these things to preserve harmony, but this was a much more serious matter. Regan would have to give Persephone, who was the chair of the Quorum, something to chew on.

"I have it on good authority that he was once a citizen of Arc Two. His father was some high ranking Legionnaire in generation one." Regan began with care. "Apparently this pirate was all set to follow in his father's footsteps, and then he just gave it all up. And, I know personally that this man is a fiend of the worst kind, he couldn't keep his eyes off my wife."

An awkward hush fell over the group. Not many could help but stare at Mr. and Mrs. Marrow, as they were so profoundly mismatched it was almost comical.

"Well, that sounds promising." Jennifer, another woman on the Quorum said. "Do you think this is a hostage situation?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Persephone cautioned the group as they tittered with excitement. "It looks as if Arturo is talking with them and then being led aboard willingly. No one seems to have been taken against their will."

Everyone except Meg, Ben thought to himself as a cold sweat broke on his neck. He could see his daughter's eyes darting from one person to the next, and he didn't like the looks Architect was sending back.

"Can we hear what they're saying?" Persephone followed up, watching the tiny figures on screen as their lips moved.

"No," Robert answered glumly. "I think the bot was scrambling our speakers because all we've got is white noise."

He turned up the volume with a twist of his wrist on the LED controls, but true to his word, nothing but a light buzzy feedback was there.

"Too bad Meg's not here," Ben muttered, stepping closer to the screen to see if he could read lips as well as his daughter.

"That would be Omega?" Persephone pointed a dainty finger at the lanky form of Meg hiding behind her hair. "Why would she be helpful in this situation?"

"She's able to read lips," Ben stumbled, trying to find the words to explain the singularity of his daughter, "she's deaf you see, and she's talented enough to read a ventriloquist at work."

"I see." Persephone's answer was infuriating, as she offered no further explanation. "Your daughter cannot hear at all? How is that possible?"

"She can be a little stubborn." Ben chuckled nervously under the refined woman's steady gaze. "She had a colloquial implant fitted after Laura and I adopted her, but she insisted that it be taken out."

"Oh, that's right." The flash of empathy Persephone's expression gave him some comfort. "She's the unfortunate little one who-"

"She was all alone," Ben explained. "And my wife and I didn't win the repopulation raffle, so we wanted to offer our home and our love to that poor little soul." His voice broke dangerously and he cut himself off before he could fall into a blubbering mess.

"And are you very close with your adopted daughter?" Persephone probed, not wanting to wound the poor man further.

"As close as anyone can be to Meg, I guess." He sniffled through a slight chuckle. "She's not exactly, easy to get to know."

Persephone smiled at this, she also had first-hand knowledge of just how trying, defiant, and secretive a child could be (at any age) if they wanted to.  

*The song linked above is a great ad for any writing playlist. ;P