Little lies - NEWT

{3.03}

EDEN WALKED INTO THE meeting room - which did not have a designated name despite her numerous suggestions to Vince - just as Thomas pulled out a map from some shelf underneath the desk. Palpable tension sucked all of the air out of the room.

"There that's it. It's a few hundred miles. Based on the railways and everything that Aris told us, that's gotta be where they're headed," Thomas rambled, brain going far too quick then his mouth could. Eden, while he was talking, slunk forward into the room, brushed her lips against Newt's cheek then leant up against the wall to listen in on what was being discussed. "We can make it back within the week."

"A week?" Vince almost scoffed, shifting himself away from the table to further heighten his distaste in the idea. In doing so, he caught onto Eden's presence in the room and greeted her with a change in his expression. "It took us six months to get here. We have over a hundred kids now. You want to wander off to some point in the map, you don't even know what's there," he ranted, getting increasingly vexed as time progressed.

"I do," Jorge called out from a corner of the room, a surprise to everyone given that he was not usually present in meetings. Apparently he had more important things to do. "It's been a few years but I've been there. The last city," he continued as he emerged from the shadows.

"Their base of operations," Eden muttered, piecing together a conversation that she had put into the back of her mind almost as soon as it occurred. Jorge slowly glanced up at Eden ( as did many others in the room) looking up at her with complete confusion as to how she knew such a name. "I overheard them talking about it while I was in the hospital, I thought it was just a random code or something."

Jorge raised his brow, intrigue clouding his eyes, "It still stands?"

"From the way they were talking about it, yeah. Most of the discussions were about getting shipments from there," she trailed off, shifting uncomfortably as pain started to blossom at the back of her head. She simply internally prayed that it would not get any worse and continued to act as if nothing was wrong, not wanting to draw attention away from the extremely important matter they were handling.

"In that case, that's the last place you want to be going hermano," he paused for dramatic effect, looking around the room to make sure he had everyone's attention as this was a rather important matter. "The lion's den."

"It's nothing we haven't done before," Thomas counted, crossing his arms over his chest. It did not take a genius to notice that Vince's patience with Thomas' stubbornness was beginning to run out at an exponential rate. Just as the thought about Thomas' back up plan ( that Newt had previously informed her about) crossed her mind, the same pain began to radiate all through her skull - this time so much more intense that it blurred her vision. She had to refrain from audibly wincing and focused her blurred gaze at a specific point, so it at least looked like she was paying attention instead of trying not to cry.

Vince scoffed again, the sound further heightening the pressure building in Eden's head, "Yeah with months of planning and reliable information, the element of surprise. All things which we do not have now."

"Would you just hear me out?" Thomas pressed, struggling to remain as calm as he usually did in these situations. He was starting to get far too desperate and it was all too obvious, even to Eden who could only see a margin on his face.

"Last time we went off half cocked, I lost everything," he half yelled, just as a way to get his point across. If Eden knew anything about Vince it was that he was a calm, caring person hidden underneath the leadership role. Much as she was. The yelling did not do wonders for her headache, in fact it did the complete opposite and pushed it to the point where she couldn't stand it any longer. She needed the pills that were currently in her jacket pocket, sharp against her fingertips. "You remember that?" Vince added at a usual volume, the room falling into complete silence.