The Next Dark Age: book 1 beginning

Chapter 19: the emotional toll

They finally managed to find the scientist, dead. He had a syringe injected into his arms. Trisha could see the remains of some liquids that looked like the medicine that was given to the hybrids before.

As Trisha looked around the room, she noticed just how neater it was with his binders, papers, and little toys being cleared off his desk and floor. The only thing on his desk now was a piece of paper.

"Did someone get here before us?" Sapphire asked at the edge of the room, as she was the only one who couldn't go into the room with the dead body.

"Nope," Stephanie replied while folding up the piece of paper and putting in her pocket, "He committed suicide over his 'innocent and guileless experiments' having been released. Do any of you guys know about this?"

Trisha stomach dropped and she felt tears well up in her eyes, "When i was here earlier i found a bunch of half-human half-animal hybrids and i decided to release them, because I thought that he was experimenting on them in some sort of sick second generation of genetic modification experiment. I later learned he was trying to find some way to reverse the process." For some reason Trisha heard a voice in the back of her mind chuckle, why was someone chuckling over this?

"Well great," Stephanie said in a dry and tired voice, "We should most likely hide the body, and then forge a note saying that he took a sick day."

For the first time since Trisha had known him, Harris looked actually mad at Stephanie, "what, NO! We can't just hide a body and then go on like nothing happened, not only that but people deserve to know what happened to this guy and why he committed suicide."

This time Trisha spoke in a rushed voice, "But if we leave him here then the security around my mom will tighten, then we might never get another chance to rescue her, and she will die and then Nydia will become a god and then we will all die too because she wants to commit genocide on us. Does that sound like a good plan?"

"No but we can't just..."

"Harris, listen, " Michael interrupted in a soothing voice, "we are going to tell people about what happened to him, okay? But before that we are going to hide his body with Tim's friend, then we are going to rescue Trisha's mom. After all that we return his body here with his suicide's note, does that sound good?" Harris signed silently and looked down, Michael then continued, "Stephanie let me see that note, I'll forge a note saying that the lab has been shut down for a week due to cleaning people coming over, and that the hybrids have been moved to a secret base that that only the higher ups are allowed in and I'll write it in his handwriting using that note as a reference." Michael turned to look at Trisha, "Did his office look like this when you came over?"

"No, it was much messier. The binders and papers were all over the desk and floor along with the little fidget toys he had."

"Okay, Harris you trash the office, Steph and Trisha, you guys move the body, then meet me back here.'

Trisha and Steph silently picked up the body and began moving it out and finally dumped it in the cellar that Tim friends was in.

"You mind telling me what happened here?" He asked a little nervously as he started to back away.

"I'd rather not, sorry." Stephanie replied in a tired voice, and shut the door with a level of apathy only shown in people who had been sleep deprived. In fact Steph showed other signs of sleep deprivation ever since they had moved away from Hector's like baggy eyes, monotone responses, and just general slowness. Trisha knew that Steph was getting a normal amount of sleep though, as whenever Trisha went on guard she could hear Steph snore slightly

"Are you okay Steph, you seem sluggish recently?"

"Yeah, it's just it has been a long, what, two weeks? Yeah it's been two weeks since those psychos attacked our charity community, and since then a lot has gone down, and it's just been... difficult."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Oh no, I don't do that gushy emotional crap, so please don't ask me."

Trisha breathed a sigh of relief, she didn't know Steph that well and that question was asked more out of obligation than of actually wanting to help. Trisha did want Steph to get better, but that was more of a job for Michael, certainly not Trisha.

Despite being satisfied with Steph's answer, Trisha felt like she was about to clean up someone else's mess, but why did she feel that way? She wasn't cleaning up Steph's mess, Michael would be doing that, and Harris would be on the sideline worried sick but not actually doing anything because he was a social mess.

Now that Trisha thought about that, she had felt some subtle emotions or thoughts that didn't belong to her a lot after the TGk initially attacked, they had stopped at Hector's, but then she had felt someone laugh at the suicide scene.

Steph started to complain that Trisha was moving too slow, which snapped Trisha back to reality where Steph was walking away back towards the base, and Trisha thought it wise to come too. Steph started complaining about something else, but Trisha wasn't paying attention. She was too busy thinking about how she was *this* close to getting her mom back, and then everything would be relatively normal again.

Trisha thought that she only pondered these perfect scenarios for a short time, but to her surprise she was back to the base, where Michael was coming up with some convulated plan, and was giving Trisha a look that you gave someone when you were about to say something that would annoy them