OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

Under Pressure

The possible implications of his snooping knotted Marcus' stomach as he watched the monitors. He'd easily intimidated a Tinker carrying out his duties on negative-sixteen, chasing him off to who-cared-where, clearing out any human witnesses.

First, Marcus went through Meg's locker after breaking the keypad he'd ordered the Tinker show him. All he found was a confusing instrument that looked about twice the size of Meg, and a snarled old sweater.

Next, he set his sights on the footage that would give him a window into Meg's last few hours in public. Marcus' actions were skirting a line he'd never crossed before.

With a few easy strokes, Marcus rewound the footage to find the hallway server door as Meg led a dopey bot inside.

He scrutinized her standing outside the server bay with a nervous expression, glancing around as if someone was looking. When the bot came back, they rolled on towards the elevators.

What were they looking for? Marcus' head spun, he hadn't forced his mind to think this hard in a long time.

He couldn't read any of the hand movements Meg and the bot made, but somewhere in his primitive brain, Marcus understood that something wasn't right. He leaned in as if the pixels held a coded message.

"Are you waiting for someone?" A refined voice startled Marcus upright, snapping him into attention.

Her gleaming silver hair swept across the room, and Marcus rolled up his shoulders to face Persephone.

As the Quorum's chair she commanded the attention in every room, and as a statuesque woman with watchful eyes, she was intimidating, to say the least.

She inspected Marcus, her expression neutral.

"Are you still looking for Meg?" Ben chimed in, poking his head out from behind Persephone's impressive frame.

"Still?" Persephone repeated, inclining her head towards Ben.

"This Legionnaire came by our home earlier, looking for Meg," Ben answered keeping his eyes on Marcus.

Marcus knew he was caught. A light sweat broke out under the collar of his button-up shirt, and he desperately wanted to tug it away from his burning skin.

"How much do you know?" Persephone was never one to beat around the bush.

"I know that something is wrong on Arc City Two." Marcus blurted out, hoping this was enough. "And I know Meg hasn't been seen in forty-eight hours."

Persephone nodded at this, evaluating her options.

"And, why are you investigating all the way down here?" She pressed gently. "By yourself?"

"Because I haven't shared my suspicions with my Captain yet," Marcus hung his head, it frustrated him that he so readily responded to this woman's authority. "I was looking for footage of Meg on the last day that I saw her."

Ben was appalled at this boy's brazen tailing of his daughter. Had he known that she was dealing with this, he would have intervened or protected her. But how could he have known? Meg rarely opened up, even to him.

Ben averted his eyes and caught the glimmer of Meg's chromed banjo poking out from its case. The instrument had been abandoned on the floor in a haphazard position near the lockers against the wall.

A weight heavier than anything he'd ever felt pressed on Ben's chest. He couldn't help but fear that the same fate had befallen his adopted daughter.

She had been used and would be the first to be discarded when they no longer needed her.

Pooled on the floor next to Meg's banjo was one of Ben's old sweaters. He recognized the gnarled wool and elbow patches right away. Meg must have taken it to keep warm down here, and possibly to keep a small reminder of the people who loved her.