Sean’s phone pinged and he fished it out of his pocket immediately, glad for a distraction from the bizarre situation he was in. Once he opened the message, Koenig’s voice filled the room, quiet but stern.
“You have two choices, Keith. Either you get into that chair of your own will, or I force you to.”
A man’s panicked voice came next, wobbly with fear.
“I have rights Mr. Koenig! You can’t do this to another human being, what’s wrong with—”
“I’m going to give you two minutes, after that, you can’t blame me for what happens to you.”
“No! You can’t do this to me, I have a future! You called me here for a job, not this! Please, I’m begging—”
A loud ‘boom’ cut the man short, and the next second, there was a choked gasp before Koenig’s voice once again came on.
“Is the system ready?”
A faint ‘Yes, sir’ was heard.
“Good, strap him in, I don’t have time to waste, least of all on a Volunteer.”
The audio ended abruptly, and Sean could only gape at his phone. “This is a fake, the audio’s been manipulated!”
“Convenient, isn’t it?” Koenig sneered, tapping his table unnervingly. “Where Keith begged us both, he only begged me. Your order to shoot him was erased, as well as your threat to cripple him. I’ve always known you were ambitious but this has exceeded my expectations. ‘Coincidentally’, this file has been leaked on the internet.”
He locked eyes with Sean. “Don’t think I’ll let you get away with this Sean. I’ll make sure you regret ever going behind my back.”
Just as he finished speaking, the doors of the large office swung open violently and Praise ran in, panting harshly. Her clothes and hair were a mess as if she’d just stepped out of the house without checking her appearance in the mirror, but the look on her face told of absolute panic.
She skidded to a stop when she saw Sean but quickly redirected her attention to Koenig. “Sir, we have a problem, Mr. Ark is in the process of procuring a search warrant for the company building.”
Koening started, whirling around so suddenly she was surprised he didn’t get whiplash. “What?”
She took a deep breath to steady herself before speaking again, waving her hands dramatically as she spoke. “There’s an audio file floating around on the internet, a conversation with Keith, Volunteer 96. He somehow got a hold of it and is convinced Nuroh has something to do with Mi-, Volunteer 118’s disappearance, since I work here. I can’t say for certain when he plans to do it, but he’s determined to take action.”
As Sean watched her talk, her eyes wild with terror and her tone dripping with dread, an epiphany hit him like a bullet train at full speed.
Praise was behind this. Everything.
She had orchestrated it, weaving a delicate web of lies that had ensnared both he and Mark. Playing her best hand in this game of deceit and duplicity, she had worn the veneer of the victim, slinking into the shadows each time the spotlight was to fall on her.
The pieces of the puzzle clicked in his mind. How could he have been so stupid, to have let a recording make the decision of trusting her? To let down his guard around her, and allow her manipulate Mark? Mark, the most important pawn in the game?
It was all so clear to him now, and the thought made him boil over in anger, the fires of ire licking at his mind. Her mask shattered to pieces under his gaze and now he could lucidly see behind the unassuming smile she wore, and the false sympathy she shared.
YOU ARE READING
No Blessed ✓
Fantasy- Completed - For Mikel Ark, being offered a job by the world's biggest gaming company is a dream come true, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will launch his career as a hotshot programmer. But what Mikel hasn't been told is that his employer's...
