Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 29: Perkins and Co.

"Hey." Another voice butts in loudly, not without some irritation.

I glance to my right, back towards Seth's abandoned room. The nurse is still standing in the doorway, watching this all with a worried crease between her brows. The two pigs are standing parallel to her in the hallway— and Townsend has taken a step forward.

"This isn't your case." Townsend says definitively, angrily, and for a first, Hernandez doesn't try to stop him. "You can't just come in here and claim it is."

"Actually," Perkins sighs, putting his badge away, "it is. We were afraid you'd think that, so we brought the proof of transfer we thought you locals'd need."

You locals. Townsend is all but bristling.

Perkins glances to his partner, and Lynch releases me for a moment as she steps forward, holding out a file of papers I hadn't noticing her holding in her other hand. "This order comes from higher ups," she tells Townsend, and she might as well have called him a good-for-nothing nobody with the glare he gives her. I can practically hear it in the way she says "higher ups": higher up than you locals.

Hernandez steps up to take the file from her before Townsend can snatch it from her hands. I can see him visibly fuming as Hernandez flips through the official-looking papers within the cream colored folder, his face impressively impartial. Townsend looks ready to burst by the time Hernandez looks up from the file, eyeing both Perkins and Lynch.

While I might have been convinced before that this change didn't bother him, now I see just how wrong I would have been. Hernandez holds Perkins' gaze with a solidity to it, a silent hate present, vehement, behind the impassiveness of the look. I can feel it now, the invisible animosity simmering between the officers and the agents.

Is this what the world of adults is like? Hatred and anger all hidden behind professional masks of smiles and terseness? The tension in the air is palpable.

Perkins steps forward to stand beside his own partner, and he stares down at Hernandez and Townsend. Both of them look small beside this government giant, and Lynch isn't a presence to be ignored either. She looks like she could rip you apart and not even break a sweat.

I'm behind the two agents now, and with Townsend as Hernandez squaring them off, neither of them are looking at me.

"Well," Hernandez says, his voice slicing through the tension like a cake knife. "If you've come all the way here to take our case from us, these papers say you can, so we can't stop you."

I look about the group of them, seeing my chance, and my heart rate is beginning to pick up. A pair of eyes catches mine then, and I find it's the nurse, watching me with a startling intensity. I stare back at her, and she sends a pointed look down the empty hall behind me, then looks back at me. And I realise what she's implying.

"Yes." Lynch says in response to Hernandez.

"We'll be needing your notes," Perkins adds, smiling as easily as before, though there's a sharkish quality to it now. "If you would be so obliged, it would be a great help to us."

I'm already toeing my way backwards, my gaze darting from the agents to the officers to the nurse. The nurse watches me back away, and she says nothing. She averts her gaze to the scene in front of her, and none of the officials notice me.

My heart is racing by the time I make it to the corner, and as soon as I slip behind it, into a separate hallway, I'm running again. I don't wait for the three pieces or the pigs to notice I'm gone, I run straight for the stairwell, slowing only to keep the door from slamming behind me.

The first flight down I race like it's an obstacle course, taking each step at a time. Very quickly that becomes tedious, and I begin taking the steps in twos, then threes, until I'm basically just hopping the railings and stumbling down the plastic banisters. Each time I land I can feel how close I am to doing it wrong, to twisting an ankle or tumbling down a full flight of stairs, but I don't let myself stop or slow down. I have to use this chance the nurse gave me.

Seth is probably long gone by now, and I have no idea where he'd go.

Home? My home? No way. Does he have a home to go back to?

Jesus, how can I not know even that?

I want to strangle myself. I'm pouring out of the stairwell on the ground floor when I hear the door three flights up slam open, unintelligible shouting tumbling down the stairs to follow me out the door. They noticed I'm gone, I'm guessing.

I don't stop running.

Every day at soccer practice comes into play now, every game, every lap of the field. My legs are shaky, they feel like they want to give out on me, but I keep pushing. It's from all this running, running from Seth, running towards him.

Why can't I just make up my mind?

Where would he go? I force myself to think as I barrel into the main lobby, startling a group of people waiting to get checked in.

Back to the zoo? I wonder. No.

Seth. Sundo.

Where would he go? Where would he go?

The front doors to the hospital are in front of me, and, pushing at them, I keep running.

.

.

.

Where do you think Seth has got off to?

Surprise, though! I have two chapters ready for you guys this time! I guess it's a bit of a late Pride Month gift :)

The song is Alien Boy by Oliver Tree!

That being said, hope you have an awesome day/a restful night!