Subject A7

Chapter Thirty-Four

"Josephine is here," Billy says as we walked into the room. There was a table with five people sitting at it, I easily recognised Vincent and Tony, there was a woman, a young blonde haired boy who looked weirdly familiar and another man. They were in the middle of a discussion when we walked in but as soon as I laid eyes on Vincent and he met mine, he stopped talking to stare at me.
"Ah, Josephine," the man says standing up to smile. "What do you think of our safe place?" he asks.
I stood in the center of the room facing the table, Billy moves to stand next to Tony. Everyone's eyes were on me, I felt exposed and uncomfortable, I wanted to think I was fine and I was not in any harm but I did lie about who I was and if they find out... what would they do to me? Arcane punished people by using the infected, what if these people were no different? Dylan may have highly spoken about the Fireflies but what if there was more to it then I knew.
"It is amazing," I tell him honestly.
"Better than Arcane?" he asks.
"It doesn't compare. Arcane was white, dull and wasn't warm, this place is full of life and I felt at home the second I walked in."
Vincent whispers something to the woman sitting beside him, she slightly frowned and whispered something back.

"This place, it took us a very long time to find it and build it to the way we needed it to be. Safe and it is our home. We're hoping to save as many immunes from Arcane as we can in order to save humanity and take down Arcane but in order to do that we need to know all the locations of Arcane."
I shrugged. "I didn't know that there were more Arcane buildings."
"Well, there is," he says. "And once we've accomplished that our next goal is to leave this place to find our safe haven. A place where we no longer have to hide from the infected, where our children are able to grow up without knowing the horrors we've had to endure."
"What about a cure?" I ask him.
"Arcane is still in the process of finding a cure, after twenty years they have yet to be successful. What makes you think that they'll find one?"
He had a point.
"And why would we want to force you or any of the others to endure in such pain? Killing the young... doing that won't bring us a better future."
I don't know... there was something about this man that I just did not like.
"So... is there anything you can tell us about Arcane?" the man asks.
"How about you tell me your name before I say anything else, I don't know any of you and from what I've learned, you can't trust anyone," I glanced at Billy.
The man slowly nods. "That is understandable, my name is Johnson and I am part of the council as you can obviously see. You've already met Tony, the leader of the Fireflies and I already know you've met Vincent who is second in command. That is Evelyn, she is one of our best medics here and has for a long time tried researching ways of gaining a cure and so far no luck but her methods are better than Arcane's so no need to worry. The young one if Jerome, he is the leader of Group A but you did not see him on the mission when rescuing you at Arcane because he was busy on another mission and lucky last, this woman is Helen, she and David are in charge of training."

"Training?"
"Training those who wish to participate in going on missions for information of Arcane, rescuing more immunes or taking down Arcane. That kind of training," Helen says. She looked more like a man compared to the Evelyn woman. More muscular and she had short black hair whereas Evelyn had light brown hair and appeared to be more gentle.
And now knowing who these people were, Evelyn and Jerome... the lie just got bigger and far worse than I imagined.
"I can tell that you don't trust me," I say slowly.
"Oh?" Johnson looked surprised.
"But why are you telling me all this information? Aren't you meant to be all distrusting?"
Johnson grins. "You are correct, but before I answer that how about now you tell us who you really are," Johnson says sitting back down folding his arms.
I was so screwed.
I open my mouth to answer but nothing came out.
"It's okay, we have nothing but time," John says continuing to smile.
"I-I t-told you," I stammered. "M-my name is J-Josephine."
"Come on" Johnson was still smiling which infuriated me. "You don't have to lie to us."
I glanced nervously at Vincent, he knew who I was.
Vincent laughs. "We're kidding Avery, knew you were lying but curious to know how far you'd take it."
I almost passed out, I was stressing so much that I thought I was about to pass out from it.
"You okay?" his smile drops. "You look pale."