Man on the Inside

Man on the Inside - Part 4

"No... oh no, no, no, no..."

"Oh yes you idiot! I'm stuck in your gut!"

He can't be. It's not physically possible in any way shape or form.* William felt another flutter from his middle and he jerked his hand away as if he'd touched a red coal. But it is, I can literally feel it. What Retten was shoving in my mouth... his laugh, it makes sense. Louis is inside me. Retten put Louis down my throat and now he's literally inside me. Inside my stomach, with the tea from this morning and... acids. Oh God...

William fell back against the fridge, not trusting his legs to keep himself upright. He felt lightheaded.

---

Louis wanted to throttle the rookie. Only with William would something this ridiculous and disgusting happen. He stumbled as the stomach shifted again and landed against a wall, feeling a fast throb on his back that echoed the pounding in his ears. It was William's heartbeat, he realized, and it was going faster than a motorcycle piston.

"Will, could you take a breath and slow your damn heart! I'm about to go deaf here!"

Suddenly the stomach walls were heaving and contracting, a sickening retching sound from above accompanying it. Louis was pitched from side to side, cursing as he repeatedly fell, once on his injured shoulder.

"What the hell are you doing?!" he screamed.

He heard spitting, coughing, and finally a swallow from above. Next thing he knew, a trickle of cool water splashed into the chamber.

"How are you still alive?" rasped William.

"Excuse me?"

"You've been in my stomach with hydrochloric acids for the last four hours. How are you still alive?"

Louis stiffened, raising his hand which was covered in a thin layer of gastric juices. He immediately rubbed it off, expecting to see his skin eaten away, but he was fine.

"I don't know, but I better stay this way." He could hear panting. "The hell is wrong with you now? You're not choking up on me are you?"

"How would you like it if you suddenly found out that another person was trapped inside your body?!"

William was sitting on the floor with his arms crossed his middle and his face blanched when Reese came back.

"Man the line for the deli was long. They were having a half off half a sub sale... Will, you sick?"

The younger agent held the cell phone out to him. "Call Cetz, tell him I know where Louis is."

---

Cetz tapped the computer monitor on the other side of Grant's desk. Retten's files were encrypted very well, but not well enough. The main computer already had first half of them readable and half the tech staff was reading through those. The later entries were harder to crack. On one half of Cetz's screen were the entry titles, and on the other was a time tracker of actions on the computer.

"That's odd," muttered Cetz. He highlighted a part of the time tracker.

"What is it?" asked Grant.

"Most of the entries you said were missing, 378-390, they were copied to an external drive and hour before being deleted from Retten's computer."

"Somebody saved those files?"

"Yeah, but where are they?"

Cetz's headset beeped.

"Hello?"