Caught

Chapter Eight

Shocked expressions painted the faces of Aidan and the girl. I could only imagine what they're thinking right now, although I got a bunch of my own questions and thoughts were swimming in my brain. Like how these two weren't aware that we were here in the Institute for... about four years now and they had no clue we were here.

"Okay," Tyson started. "So, why are you actually here? You aren't part of... it all, right?"

"If you're talking about the experiment, operation Evolutians or whatever, yeah, we are." I said, straightforward. "We're just like almost every other kid here. Genetically-modified freaks, if you want to call it that."

He looked pale - in shock.

"What?" I asked. "I thought your dad ran the place, doesn't he tell you stuff like this." I try to do my best 'fatherly' voice. " 'Oh, Tyson, just so you know, your two childhood best friends are in the building, right now, but they have no clue who the hell you are because they're part of this wacko experiment.' "

He gave me a dirty look. "Seems like you haven't changed." A small smile did, however, appear on his face. "For the record though, he's only my foster father, Mr Miller is Alyssa's actual father." He gestured to the girl, whose name, I realized, wasn't mentioned yet. "And we haven't really been part of all this since last summer, probably. We knew our parents were working on this big project but I didn't think it was this..." He tried looking for the right word.

"Bad?" I suggested.

"Awful?" Aidan jumped in.

"Inhumane?"

"Torturous?"

"Illegal?"

"You didn't think that your parent would be involved in the building of an army that's supposed to take down powerful human beings and that after all that, they'll kidnap all the innocent children and turn them all into Evolutains?"

The run on sentence that came out of Aidan's mouth left the three of us with our jaws hanging.

"Yeah, basically." Alyssa said. "Quite a long description you got there, Aidan."

"Being at the Institute for six years really shows the negative side of it, doesn't it?" He laughed, and so did we.

The sound of footsteps coming towards us made us stop instantly. One of the guards came to fetch us after we suddenly burst out of the room.

"Mr Miller won't start the meeting until you lot get back," He explained, forcing us to move from our place. "He's getting pretty angry so I'd hurry if I was you."

Alyssa sighed. "That's dad for you, always impatient."

"Well, we did walk out on him." Aidan pointed out.

I glared at him. "Who's side are you on?"

"Yours, obviously. But just saying..."

Tyson groaned. "So, another meeting to go through." He turned to me and Aidan. "This will be just another snooze fest, just you wait."

Aidan put an arm around me as we started walking. "Great, then I could catch up on my beauty rest."

-- : --

Tyson pulled me to the side before entering the room. The guard eyed us curiously when we didn't go straight in, but left us alone after a stern look from Tyson.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"I just-" He paused, looking at me closely. "I really didn't think I'd see you again, Lauren. After your parents said you guys were moving to Paris, I thought it was kind of strange that you didn't tell us yourself. Alyssa and I knew something was wrong... we just didn't know you were caught up in all this."