War Within Us

chapter 6 . late night talks

I just stared at the screen for a few moments and all I could see was a dot on the screen. No number, no nothing. I tried not to think too much about how that was possible and despite the weirdness of it, I answered the call.

"Yes?"

"Who am I talking to?" I was expecting a harsh voice to greet me with aggression but instead the voice was stable and free from any emotion.

"You are the one who called me, I should be the one to ask who you are?"

I didn't get a response right away. It seemed like he didn't expect me to question him back.

"You found a cube, right? "

So we were right about cube having a function.

"So that's why one of the edges was different, that's how you called us. What do you want?"

"That device belongs to someone else, I just want to know where he is." I started to hear the anger rising through his voice. 

He was getting angry. And that tone was very familiar. I was almost sure that I heard this voice some other time.

I forced my brain and memories to recognize the voice and everything clicked. He was one of the four people that came into our house that day. He was the rude dude.

"You are his superior right? That guy that barged into our house a week ago. The rude one to be exact."

I knew he knew whom I was. He took a breath.

"I have to make sure that you are the person you say you are. Password has been used already so it is invalid. Tell me something that only 6 people that was there that night could know."

I didn't have to think too much about his request. One glance at Esther and words came out of my mouth. I didn't have any chance to say sorry to her.

"Just to remind you, our house is still clean, we vacuum it very frequently."

I heard a very distant laugh, obviously didn't belong to the guy I was talking to. I appreciated the sense of humour.

Before giving him a chance to speak, I asked my own question to confirm that they were the people who they claimed to be even though I was quite sure at this point. It was just fun to question a guy who hated to be questioned.

"I need to make sure you are those guys from that day. I'm sure you were not the one who sent me a thank you gift but other guys from your team did. They added a note so that I would know it was from you guys. What did the note say?"

I heard him talk to someone else. "I told you no notes. What part of it you didn't understand?"

Someone talked right back at him. "How else would they know what it was for? And trust us a little, we didn't say anything specific. Haven made sure it had nothing obvious." A second later he continued. "Oh come on, don't give me that face. They probably already know his name. It has been hours."

"Yeah, he told us his name. Anyways, the note?"

I heard his grumpy voice saying something similar to 'say the note.'

The voice that had a slight accent to it talked with ease this time, satisfied with his earlier defense.

"Thanks for the coffee, I hope we can have one for real next time."

Yeah, this guy was one of the nice, generous ones that sent us that box.

"I would be happy to welcome you, hopefully on a much nicer day."