lost souls ➳ to the edge of the sky | ✓

EIGHT

☪

What kind of crap is that? I had heard of that stupid rumor circulating around PHASe, but I never anticipated it would go too far like this. To my anger which I was forcing to suppress, everyone had their eyes at Seven, most of them intrigued by the nonsense and even Raske was buying this, including Eight and Dr. Park. Well what do you expect from that woman, anyway? Zero, Three and Nine didn't look too pleased to hear that and so was I, and Six looked a bit reluctant of where to look that he set his eyes on the table.

"Where'd you get the idea, Twenty?" Ten commented. "You think these damn rumors are worth talking about now?"

"We don't know if she really has amnesia." Twenty sent Seven a wary look, making me clench my fists under the table. "She could be faking it—"

"Yeah, try fixing your fake attitude first before starting some trashy gossip, how 'bout that?"

A scoff resounded throughout the room. All heads turning to the one beside Three, Dr. Park cleared her throat that ceased the mutters entirely; turned out Raske had been watching the uprising commotion.

"It appears that they are done." Dr. Park crossed her arms over her chest.

Raske's jaws tightened. "These rumors. . . are a mere quintessence of downright incompetence. I could not bear the fact to hear people have the audacity to even bring up this nonsensical, outrageous speculation in this formal meeting." He inhaled sharply. "All of you operatives—calling you a disappointment is not enough to absolve such insult to P.H.A.N.T.A.S.M. I do not want to hear any of this matter from this moment, or the Head Department itself would not give a second thought to have you detained from your position or even worse than that."

He moved to stand, eyeing each one of us coldly before turning on his heels.

"You are all dismissed."

The other staff followed him out, and soon as they were gone, a couple of operatives left their seats, almost everyone seemed to avoid the direction where Ten was heading to—Seven. I made my way towards the two of them but I stopped on my tracks when I saw Zero walking up to them yet he was called by Dr. Park.

I shook my head to myself in disappointment at my own thought that I'd get to talk to Seven most of the time, which shouldn't be it. She has her own time and I should respect that.

"Hey." Six walked up behind me, making me turn to him. "We need to talk."

I stuffed my hands into my pockets. "Sure, what is it?"

His eyes darted behind me, and for a moment I thought he was eyeing Dr. Park but there were others behind us. However, I saw him make a slight nod and I didn't even know what to feel at him speaking in a low voice, "You guessed it right. But we're not talking here."

He gestured for me to follow him out the command center, meaning my chance of speaking with Seven dwindled to a perfect zero, although I pushed the thought aside since I had an odd feeling in my chest seeing Six acting so anxious though it wasn't obvious to anyone else. Raske just announced of Six discovering another KAIROS activity; it certainly was enough to bring PHASe back on working their asses off into finding out, but seeing Six act this way, I knew something was up. Something that could've involved PHASe in particular.

I followed Six back inside our room. He pulled the curtains down before leaving the window as the door closed behind me, my eyes watching him move about the room pressing unidentifiable squares down the walls and throughout the floor with his hues radiating green and his face streaking with glowing patterns. I leaned my back against the doorframe; I've never seen him so serious even when he's got his augs on.