After what felt like an hour of waiting and a lot of talking, Cloud had warmed up enough to Jane to actually allow herself to rest on her lap. Samuel was impressed, to say the least.

“You came a long way.”

“I just did what you did to me.”

“I don’t remember letting you rest on my lap.”

“True.” She starts caressing the girl’s head. “You let me snuggle with you like a body pillow.” She smiles fondly. “The first time we did that, I was so nervous but I never felt so safe. It was the first time I could sleep without fear of someone touching me.”

“I mean, I did touch you.” His sarcasm was very alive despite their situation. If Jane had a book, she’d throw it at him. With their backpacks and equipment confiscated, she had to make do with annoyed glares.

“Shut up.”

For a moment, it feels like they aren’t probably going to be executed after being painfully interrogated by government dogs.

Samuel sighs. “What do we do now?”

“You’re the one who figures stuff out.” Jane mocks him. “Think of something.”

Despite her resting, she wasn’t actually sleeping so Cloud suggests something. “Um…”

Both partners look at her, waiting. She feels a bit pressured but talks anyway. “I-I could open the door for us.”

It takes them a second to process the information. “Wait, what? How?”

She sits up. “You two are here because of what these people have been doing, right?”

“Project: Trigger.” Samuel notes. “Yeah, we heard of it and came to steal the results.”

“Then I guess you came here to steal me.”

Jane rubs her head, feeling the migraine settling in. “Ok, wait. Earlier, you said the formula was in your DNA. What did you mean by that?”

She sighs. “The way they’ve been producing the pills is… Um…”

“Tough topic to digest?” Samuel notices her struggle and recognizes it.

“Kinda… More like tough for me to talk about. I-”

Before she could continue, she’s rudely interrupted by the door to their cell opening and a man wearing a suit being shoved in. He had a bruised eye and a bleeding mouth.

“Dad!” Cloud runs for the man almost immediately.

Whoever put him there was quick to close the door, probably to avoid the prisoners from trying to escape.

Looking at the new face, he looked like a carbon copy of his daughter except older. Same hair, same emerald eyes.

“What did they do to you?” The girl asks with terror in her voice. The older man is quick to comfort her though.

“Nothing I wasn’t expecting.” He then looks at the two unfamiliar faces. “And I take you’re the invaders Deck sent.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

This catches both off guard, with Samuel being the one to speak up. “Wait, what? Deck? How do you know him?”

The man looks at the camera before coughing up some blood. “Good thing those don’t have audio feeds.” Finding no strength to stand up, he does it like the rest of them and rests his back against a wall. “Introductions first. Name’s Law.”

“Law as in, Lawrence?” Jane asks, to which the newly introduced man nods.

“Why not Rence then?” Samuel asks. Law shrugs.

“Nicknames aside, I’m the responsible for the leaks you’ve been trailing up until now.”

“Wait, why?” Jane asks, confused. “Why leak your own project?”

Cloud, who was still hugging her father, has her hair caressed and forehead kissed. “What do you think?”

Samuel slowly pieces the information together but can’t quite figure out what’s going on. Same for his companion.

Law sighs. “Buckle up.”

“To cut the long story short, we began this after we retired from our services to this country. During our time serving at the war, we realized something: why do we have to fight without the certainty of victory? Why do we have to be weak like our enemies?” He straightens himself while talking. “We wanted more. So after it all ended, me and a few other people got together and started theorizing on ways to enhance the human body.”

“Like suits?”

“No, no, suits can be stolen, copied. This had to be ours and ours only.” He clears his throat. “Once we speculated it was possible, we invested all of our savings into it but realized almost immediately it wouldn’t be enough. So pretty soon, we began infiltrating governmental positions and dodging funds for this project.” He sighs while rubbing his eyes with his hands. “Thirty years is what took us but we finally reached a formula that would allow us to synthesize a drug.”

“What I’m thinking Crimson and Hawk stole.”

“The other two, yes. I saw them running through the cameras.” He tries to stand up again. His daughter stops him.

“Dad, stop. Stay down.”

He looks at her and gives up trying to force himself. “Ok, sweetheart.”

He then continues. “The problem is the how. After studying the way the formula behaved on the human body, we came to the conclusion that it needed to be diluted. The only stable way we found to do that was by extracting it from someone’s blood.” He looks away from his daughter. “So in other words, we had to have someone be our guinea pig.”

Something clicks inside both partners’ heads, with Jane being the first to say it. “Oh… That explains why you started the leaks.”

Her visage becomes grim as she looks at Cloud from top to bottom, imagining the pain she had to endure for the sake of their greed.

“We eventually found out the younger the host, the more likely that they wouldn’t die. And eventually, they aimed at my own daughter…” His voice fades out as he refuses to continue but does anyway. “So I figured I didn’t want this anymore, not if she was involved.”

“Couldn’t they kill you if they found out?” Samuel asks. He shrugs.

“Seeing her being hurt was already killing me inside. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

“It would have to me!” She shoves his shoulder, which makes him yelp. She immediately regrets it and hugs him, which makes him yelp even harder. “Sorry! Sorry!”

He finds it in him to chuckle, something Samuel does as well. “Your girl is adorable.”

The sudden praise reddens her cheeks as she plays with her hair while flustered. “She sure is.”

A moment of silence settles in before Samuel continues. “Cloud, you said you could open the door?”

“I-”

Before she can continue, her father intervenes. “She doesn’t like being violent.”

“But we could run away from here if she just-”

“Look, I get it, ok?” He sighs. “You want to run away and all but I can’t risk having them do something to her over something she did.”

“I think they’ll try something to her over what you did.” Jane points out. “You kinda ruined their entire progress with all this.”

“Don’t remind me.” Is all he says as he hugs his daughter closer.

Somewhere else…

“Took you long enough!” A still irritated Deck reprimands a woman he had just received at his doorstep. She snarls back just as intensely.

“Shut up. You called me out of nowhere while I was busy.”

“Busy licking your pride, that’s what.” He sighs annoyedly before giving her a gun. “Go after them and don’t come back without that backpack.”

The short woman nods, rage filling her every action. She was still very, very upset over what happened a few days earlier and was ready to make sure they felt what she felt ten times over.