-Jake Aylesbury-
I felt heavy, guilt had come down on me like a sledgehammer. Swan, even when clawing for power, was loyal to the last, but had been betrayed many times. Perhaps she knew what was happening around her, or perhaps she was a blind puppet. It was a burning in the pit of my stomach, that I too was going to have to make an enemy of her at some point.
She was this companies perfect little soldier. Everything that they wanted. Did as she was told, loyal to the last, willing to give every piece of herself over to the service of this place. Built out of its betrayals, willing to turn a blind eye and cut any doubt out of herself like it was a tumour. Trinity Sciences greatest soldier, and it's greatest victim.
*
"I looked into some things whilst you trained," I muttered as Kate prodded me for information. Mostly about my melancholy as we walked through the halls. She seemed stronger, despite the beating she'd just received. The reasons for taking a bruise making it more bearable, as her skin turned yellow in patches and then peaches and cream as it should be. She was walking differently, confidence that came from facing a fire by choice and not because you were put into a compressed tube and forced to endure it.
"Define things, Mister Aylesbury?" She said lightly, feigning a playful salute with a giggle.
"The strings that link missing serums, someone wanting a mission to fail, simply to make it seem like a onetime thing and close the case before it could be opened and...just..." I was rubbing my temple, as if I had a headache. I did, too much light, not enough sleep and way too many things on my mind. I'd referred to us as monsters before, those made into Nocturnals. We had stretched consciences and blood on our hands and abilities that came out of some mad mans creation. But it was what we were going to be used for one day that made my mind twist on itself. The slow warp towards that purpose had already begun.
"And a missing body?" Kate had overheard Swan and I talking. I tried on a smile, but I probably looked like a dog when it pulls its lips back. Mimicking a smile, but teeth too sharp to be anything other than threatening.
"It all connects, the thing is lack of proof and also lack of a perp." I admitted as we went into the old lab. "Just checking on Tryst," I mumbled.
Skinner and Hudson were both on duty with Martello still in Lab Two working out the results of Kate's testing. Rodriguez was present too, just monitoring things from his seat, safely this side of the glass. I waved in at my team members and they both repeated the motion with little enthusiasm. "How is she?" I asked.
"She seems a bit hung over." Hudson grinned from ear to ear, arms crossed making him look like a large night club bouncer where he leant against the counter near the door.
"How's Miss Andersen?" Skinner peered up from the bench across the room where he was once again reading a report of some kind. It was recreational for him now, I suppose.
Kate stepped out from behind my shoulder timidly, waving like a child. "Hey," She gave them a toothy smile, nervously looking them over. "You carried me out of Ides," She'd pointed at Hudson, "and you carried... um," She looked towards the glass screen, on the other side of which in the dimmed observation room, Tryst groaned.
"Tryst," I filled in for her softly.
"Yes, Tryst, out." She had pointed at Skinner. "I owe all of you my thanks for getting me out of there at such risk to yourselves."
"No problem," Hudson had bellowed at the same time Skinner chimed, "It was our pleasure."
I went over to the observation room, opening the door quietly and slipping in. Tryst was curled in a ball on the tabletop, her hands clung round her skull. Her moans timed to each step I took. "It gets better,"
"This isn't like I expected," she sounded breathy, taking a pause between each word. In so much pain it seemed she couldn't inhale or exhale fully.
"Every restart is different. Yours shares similarities with mine. Your body tried to reject the serum, but we've reason to believe you'll be stronger than me once you get out of the fog of it." I explained, watching a tremor run through all of her muscles, setting her dark blonde hairs on end.
"Sir, it feels like my brain is going to explode in my skull and ooze out through my nose and ears." She shuddered again.
I sighed, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It will pass," I assured her. I could see the shimmer of tears rolling over the bridge of her nose. "I can knock you out if you like, it'll give you half hour peace, you may wake up out of the fog."
"Does that... really work?" She shuddered again.
I shrugged, "admittedly, not every time."
"Do it." She grit her teeth together.
I delivered a heavy punch to her face, enough to make her black out, and left the little observation room. Watching a bruise pull away from my knuckles.
"You hit her?" Kate was staring at me blankly, completely bewildered. I didn't explain it, I myself wasn't quite sure how to. Those in the medical profession inflict pain on others, for their own good, all the time. But once that becomes an act of violence, it doesn't seem as defendable. Trinity preached of causing pain to alleviate pain. It made me feel queasy that I had become a walking example of that mindset.
Jennings was standing in the doorway as I'd come out. He was smiling rather broadly. His reaction to finding out the dark truth of this place was getting stuck into unravelling what he could and grinning through it. Because knowledge is power. "You should see what he does to people he doesn't like."
A shiver rolled up Kate's back, eyes widening as she jumped round to see him behind her.
"Maxwell Jennings," He saluted at her, in much the similar way that she'd done to me earlier. "At your service."
"Kate." She frowned at him, unsure of what to think. Everyone's general reaction when first meeting him, I suppose.
"So, that thing we were discussing earlier," He turned his attention to me, making odd uncalculated gestures with his hands.
"I was just on my way to drop Kate off at her cell, then I was going to my office. Why don't you and, Skinner," I turned to see Skinner lift his eyes up from the report he was engrossed in, "meet me there again in ten minutes?"
"Really... I'm still resigned to a cell?" Kate's shoulders had slumped. "After today?"
"Okay sir," Jennings agreed, disappearing again. I swore for a slow day, there was still far too much happening, and not enough.
"Aye," Skinner grumbled, going back to his report.
* *
Miss Andersen had sunk into a melancholy on the way back to her cell. Scuffing the floor up under the heels of her feet.
"You're not locked in," I told her as we got to her door. "You'll be able to get out if you really need to. But I'd suggest to begin with, staying put."
She stared at me quizzically. "Is it normal not to lock prisoners up?"
I allowed myself a wry smile. "Honestly," I glanced down at the dried red stain on her floor. "We're all locked up within this complex. All of us prisoners. You're just hyper aware of it."
She frowned, putting her hand on my shoulder and sending a soft jolt through me. I lifted my head to look at her fingers, I focused to see an almost indistinguishable energy about them. But it fizzled and faded and the very minor electric pulse stopped travelling through my arm. "What is it Jake?"
I sighed, the only way I could breathe. Then put the door to and I told her exactly what Rin's disc had said. I watched the weight around her increase until the moment her expression turned from surprise to realisation and with it fear. She had to sit down, looking about the room as if blind, bewildered.
"So that's what my father meant..." Her throat strained.
"Your father?" I frowned.
"He said he was going to create a world worthy of me, safe for me..." She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. "I didn't think he meant... So, I'm going to be a tool he uses to bring about this world now."
I shook my head, slowly sitting down next to her. "Not if I can help it."
"You're going to what? Take Trinity Science on?" She seemed incredulous, staring off at the blood stain on the floor.
"Maybe, it all depends. It's going to take time, whatever it is we do." I muttered, sitting forward, watching her expressions change from hurt and listless to pensive.
"We?" She blinked.
"You, Skinner, Hudson, Jennings, and anyone else who'll help." That made five of us, not including Nicodemus and Griffin who were a resistance in themselves.
"You mean, go directly against my father?" She pulled her lips together pertly, her eyes drawing down sadly. "If I can get out of here one day, out of his grasp..."
"First step is resisting the things you don't agree with. Even if just subversively." I murmured into her ear. Both genuine, and admittedly manipulative.
"Alright then. I have just one question... Do we get code names?" Kate tried on a cheeky grin, it was overshadowed by apprehension.
I shook my head, "no,"
"A really cool catchphrase then?" She was hopeful.
I rolled my eyes, "we want to be inconspicuous."
"The Unit Inconspicuous! So well hidden, we can't see ourselves!" She held a fist up in the air, and on her hip to imitate a superhero pose.
I couldn't help but chuckle, ruffling her hair under my hand, she scowled up at me playfully. "Glad to see your sense of humour is intact."
"Yeah," she frowned thoughtfully, "My funny bone had been out of joint, Natalia made sure it was whacked right back in during training."
* * *
"So I kept looking for glitches and blips in footage, caught Swan like you said I would. She hadn't thought about covering up, too much." Jennings was scrolling through information on his laptop where it sat on my desk again.
"Because with what Swan was doing, she figured she wouldn't have been able to cover it up in the long run." I nodded, seeing her break into the cabinet using the nail on her little finger to pick the lock.
"But there was another blip in the footage much earlier than her breaking into it... It goes back to three days ago, whilst everyone was distracted with other things. Swan was accounted for, she had been outside your office trying not to have a crying fit." Jennings had pulled up the image of her leant against my office door, her hand over her face whilst she pulled herself together. The timestamp was highlighted at almost exactly the time all the blips occurred.
"But there were blips on the footage of many of the lower levels camera's. Most of them one after another, some to cover up someone's travelling between areas it would seem. Others to hide what it was they were doing." He was showing the discrepancies in time stamps, all of them skipping an amount of time, from seconds to several minutes.
"Can you find out who..." Skinner was leaning over Jennings shoulder where he was sat in my chair.
"I'm doing my best to recover it remotely. But I'll have a better chance running recovery from the monitor room. But that would draw a lot of attention..." He trailed off. "Here..." He pulled up three separate images in three different parts of the complex. "Whoever it was knew that the patterns of those in power would be the ones watched, instead of just replace their own, they replaced all three with a loop sequence."
On the screens Daniels, Cole and Mr Andersen were going about their business. "So they all look suspicious if the loops are caught." Skinner hummed quietly out of Jennings hearing.
"It may be one of them, trying to even out the playing field. Or someone who knows that if things are looked into, the top dogs are somehow suspect." Jennings drew a red circle around Daniels and Cole's head on their images using his mouse. "My money is on one of these two. Andersen may play people, but he's usually honest about it. He could do whatever he likes with the serums, no worries. In fact if he were more liberal, the other two would throw a party."
"So whoever it is, they're the one that wanted the mission to fail three years ago?" Skinner surmised.
"Maybe. But it breaks the pattern of the past. No false report showed up in Martello's lab. I want to believe this is same person, but I'm getting a horrible feeling it isn't." I sighed, leaning on the corner of my desk. "Then again, it's wishful thinking to believe this serum was taken by a different hand than that of a link to Ides."
"What the..." Jennings snapped up in the office chair, scrolling something. "Two more blips, one late this morning just before Swan entered Kate's room, the other happening right now. Pre-programmed loops. Which means someone in the monitor room was involved in stopping the cameras manually and switching it for pre-recorded footage... There may not be anything to recover."
"Damn it," I growled, "where are the blips..."
"I thought that was obvious, along the cell block halls leading to the deadlock cell." He started tapping away, "and... It appears Kate had just left her cell moments before the cameras cut, about twenty minutes ago."
"Kate," I stood straight and marched for the door when it swung open...