*Just a quick warning: there is a violent scene in this chapter.
Hayley's POV
Julius sets up the fake tracks while I wait for him in our hide out. I wanted to go with him and help, but he managed to persuade me otherwise by reminding me there would be lesser chances of being seen if he was alone and that he was the fastest of the two of us.
"I'll be in and out." he promises "I won't be but a minute. Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."
As if. In the mean time I take a look at what Julius had brought with him. I see a flashlight, which might come in handy right now, another bottle of water, a change of flannel, bandages and... a cloth. I take it out and notice it was wrapped around something, when I unwrapped it I am surprised to see a knife, a kitchen knife by the looks of it, but sharp enough to hurt someone with the right motivation.
"I'm keeping this..." I say placing the knife on my boots. It was small enough to fit there perfectly without getting in the way, or risk falling. Feeling better now, all was left was counting down the minutes as I wait for Julius to reappear.
He keeps to his word and appears faster than I was expecting him to, with a grin in his lips and a mischievous spark in his eyes. I can already imagine the troublesome kid he used to be when he was a child.
"All done. They should find the fake tracks soon enough, are you ready?" he asks helping me out of the hole when I went to pick up the backpack he tells me to leave it there.
"We'll come back for it if we can, but it's better if we bring as little with us as we can." he says surprisingly making sense. I still take a second to remove the flashlight I had spotted earlier. No need to leave this behind.
He holds my hand and leads me through the woods. We try to be as silent as we can, but the sun was already out and we were easy spotted in the woods, so we had to be more careful now that we didn't have the cover of night. He pauses a couple of times, keeping track of the scent and then suddenly he pulls me quickly into a tree, a finger on my lips indicating me to be silent.
I hear them, more than see them. A group of hunters was coming out of somewhere in a hurry, guns ready in their hands ready to be fired. They had found our fake tracks. It appears the plan was working.
"Do you think that's all of them?" I ask him when nobody else came out.
"There might still be some inside the bunker, but I think it's safe to say that most of them are out." he speculates serious. "Ready?"
I nod determined "Ready."
He takes me to where the hunters had come out, it was covered up by vegetation, unnoticed by a passing stranger but when you pay close enough attention you can see the unnatural disturbance. Julius shows me a code panel. I quickly insert a group of numbers, and I am not surprise when I hear the door unlocking. All hunters were given the same general code numbers to enter safe houses, only variating depending on the area. I guess they never considered that one of their own might use it against them sometime.
"Come on in." I invite Julius.
We both enter the bunker, both with our eyes and ears open to any enemy left behind. I lead us through a set of dimly lighted corridors, never once coming across anyone.
"It should be right up ahead." I inform Julius. He nods understanding. We make the final corridor undisturbed but just as we were reaching the door, said door opens taking us by surprise. I act before the other guy could even think of reacting. I punch him, making him stumble back in shock and then I proceed to use the door casing to lift myself up and lock my legs around his neck and hold his head still as I do my best to try and suffocate him. We both fall on the ground in a louder thump than I wanted too, and the guy is hitting my legs trying to break free, but I keep applying pressure and soon enough he stops struggling.
Slowly, I release him and push his unconscious body aside.
Julius's hand appears in my line of sight. I slap it away.
"Thanks for the help." I tell him sarcastically
"You looked like you had it handled." he says with a proud smile "And may I remark on how sexy it is when you take down guys half your size?"
"No, you may not." I tell him annoyed that he decided to continue with his perverted comments.
"Just telling you how it is." he says with a shrug of his shoulders "Now, is this the room you need?" he asks me seriously. His expression changing from playful to serious instantly. I swear this guy is bipolar.
I take a look around and notice the dated computers in the room.
"It's perfect." I tell him, taking a seat in front of the computer.
We were in luck, this guy had not even bothered logging off his account in the main data base, which was a very serious breach of protocol, but it came very handy to us since I could use his I.D. to hack into what I needed and nobody would even know it was me.
As I'm busy hacking, Julius removes anything dangerous or of value in the hunter and proceeds to wrapping him up tight in a chair with the use of some rope he found. The hunter was still unconscious but we don't know for how long that might last.
"Is there any duct tape in the desk?" he asks me making the final knot in one of the hunter's leg. I scavenge the drawers, quickly finding what I needed and throw it to him.
"Thanks." he says placing a piece of duct tape in the hunter's mouth. There would be no talking for him.
The computers blips, drawing my attention back and I am happy to see I had managed to get pass the firewalls and now had access to all confidential reports that were kept from the public eye.
"I'm in." I tell him. He stands beside me, crunching down slightly so he could have a good line of sight to the files. "Now I just have to find the file on my brother."
"What was your brother's name?"
"Oliver Johnson." I tell him "But he preferred to go by Mckenna."
"Try searching for Johnson but add Rollins as well." he advise me. They are thousands of hits.
"Use Mckenna instead."
Dozens of files appeared instead. "See the last entry." I click it and my face appears on the screen, it was a report of the kill order given to the team, and it was signed by a General Johnson. My father. I guess I am not really surprised that he didn't call back the kill order, but I guess it's nice to have the visual confirmation. It still stung though. The betrayal. Especially when it came from family.
"Try the one before that." Julius says calmly. "Remember what we came here to do."
I nod and do as he says, silently thanking him for putting me back on track.
I open the file and this time I am faced with my brother's photograph. I gasp when I see him staring back at me. After his death, I took off all his photos, I couldn't bear to look at him and be reminded that I didn't have him in my life anymore.
"Focus, Hayley" Julius says placing his hand on my shoulder as if in silent support.
"I know." I tell him taking a deep breath and scrolling down reading what was said. "Oh my God..."
We tracked down Oliver "Mckenna" Johnson in a small motel near Montana, where we had received information he had checked in the night before in the company of an unidentifiable female, strawberry hair, approximately 5"2 in height [Photograph available in attachment]. At 2 a.m., the team conducted a covert operation where we apprehended Mckenna in his bedroom, after receiving violent resistance from McKenna. Two deaths and a serious non fatal injury were counted on the team before subduing him, where we proceeded to bring him to an undisclosed location, off the books. The unidentifiable female was not present in the room, and no clues were found of her stay. Possible hooker. Interrogation performed by Tom Rollins, later joined by General Harrold Johnson. [Click here to see video of the interrogation.] Oliver "McKenna" Johnson died at 3.p.m., March 27th, after sustaining serious injuries and blood loss inflicted during his interrogation and a receiving kill shot in the head.
I could feel the tears falling from my eyes. Oh my God...it's true...it was all true. He really had killed him. His own son. My brother.
With shaky hands I move the mouse to click on the video of the interrogation. Julius's hand stops on top of mine.
"You shouldn't see this Hayls." he tells me with sadness in his eyes "Once you see this, you are never going to be able to unseen it. Is that really how you want to remember your brother?"
"No, it's not." I tell him looking him in the eyes "But I owe it to him to see it. To see what my father is capable of doing with my own two eyes."
He stays silent for a moment, just accessing me, and he must have found something he approved because he let go of my hand and allowed me to click on the video.
A window with the video pops up and the first image it shows is of my brother tied up to a metal chair, his shirt bloody in spots. His arms were held tight to the chair's arms, unable to move them. His head was hang low, so I didn't have a clear sight of his face. His hair was wet, even his clothes appeared to be damp. He seemed to have been there for a while now. How many hours had they tortured him? The pain he must have been in... I can't even imagine.
"Wakey, wakey, Mckenna." A voice of a man off camera says.
My brother doesn't move, so the man walks into the camera's frame and we see him raising my brothers head. I suck in a breath and raise my hand to hold tight to Julius. I needed to feel him there, to tether me in the present and not in there with my brother.
"Didn't you hear me McKenna? You're about to have a very important visitor, wouldn't want to be rude to visitors and be asleep when they get here, now would we?" he mocks my brother who doesn't reply, although is eyes are wide open, at least one eye was, the other was so swollen that I doubt he was able to see much from it. His nose was crooked and swollen, like he had been hit there multiple times, which was probably what happened and his lips were dry and cut. He looked awful.
"I don't think you are quite awake yet. Perhaps we should change that." the unknown man says with a twisted smile on his face. He moves to a little table just on the corner of the camera's frame, it was full with instruments that were too far to identify them, but one could guess their purpose. He comes back with a utensil that looked very similar with a nut cracker, which he uses to break my brother's fingers one by one. My brother's screams make me flinch and tears fall freely down my face, but I refuse to look away.
"Hayley..." Julius tries speaking, and I knew he didn't want me to keep watching.
"No." I refuse, not letting him convince me of otherwise.
The unknown man finishes my brothers right hand and just as he was going to start his left, he is interrupted by people entering the room, off camera.
"I guess we must say goodbye for now." the man says to my brother "But don't worry we can pick up right where we left off when you're done here."
"That's enough Peterson. Leave." I recognize Rollins say. Peterson...I won't forget that name. Peterson, as I now know, leaves the frame and I'm assuming the room. No one else appears in the camera's frame but I see the look my brother was giving to the person behind the camera. It was a look full of hate and hurt, and one I started carrying myself lately, betrayal. It wasn't a surprise when I see my father pull up a chair and sit in front of my brother, his back to the camera. But it was unmistankenly him. I have a feeling I would recognize him anywhere.
"Hello, son." he says calmly.
My brother smiles in false amusement.
"How nice of you to visit me General. So sorry to have to pull you from your busy schedule. I know how much you hate it, especially when it's because of your children."
"Don't be imputelent." my father snarls angry "You are a disgrace to my name, and to our institution."
"Ah of course...the great institution of the Hunters! Sworn to protect human kind against monstrous beasts." he laughs as if he had just heard a great joke "What a joke. I know the truth General and soon enough so will everyone. The movement will not stop with my death, others will come and finish the job I started."
"It's a shame you think so, son." My father says removing a gun from behind his back "I had high hopes for you, I guess your sister will have to do."
Ollie's face changed to something dangerous with those words.
"You stay away from Hayley." he says angry "Don't you dare touch her."
"Your sister is eager to prove her value. I believe the incentive of your death will be just the thing to finally push her to see my side of things. How the werewolves killed her brother in an awful attack. She will be looking for revenge. And I'll be all too happy to give her a target to get her revenge from." he tells him, a smirk on his face. "Perhaps your little strawberry blond friend? We haven't been able to find her, but don't worry, we will. It's only a matter of time. I might even have your sister kill her."
"You underestimate Hayley, you always have." my brother says with a proud smile "And if there is one thing I regret, is that I won't be there to see her pull a bullet through your head."
My father pulls the trigger and my brother fall limp in his chair. His eyes blank, no longer any life in them. The video ends, and I crunch over to the side and throw up my breakfast all over the garbage bin. Julius pulls my hair back and rubs my back with his hand.
"I'm gonna kill him." I swear, as I take in deep breaths "I'm gonna kill him."
So this chapter was intense. We finally find out exactly how Hayley's brother died and that it was Hayley's own father, General Johnson that pulled the final trigger! Now, what got me curious is, what was Oliver doing, that resolted in such a harsh punishment? And who is the strawberry blond girl? Is she important? You shall have to keep reading to find out.
Don't forget!
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