Finn
“Ten minutes. We have been here for ten minutes.” Jax grabbed a pen off the desk and started clicking it on his desk aggressively. “Ten fucking minutes and this charade continues. You two can’t seem to keep your story straight, so I’m going to ask you both again, for the last time: what—the fuck—are you doing here!”
Before I had the chance to respond, our formal discussion was cut off by one of the guards in the corner suddenly yelling. He threw himself at the seated Percy but was easily blocked by her legs. He looked like he was trying to wrestle something away from her while failing spectacularly at it. It wasn’t until another guy came to grab her feet away from his face that he could pluck away what he wanted. It was her earpiece. Shit.
“Someone has been listening to us,” he said while holding it up to Jax.
“Wait,” I couldn’t help interrupting. “She’s been sitting there for God-knows-how-long, and you seriously didn’t check for that?”
Jax was primed and ready to hop off the desk and kick my nose in before Orion intervened.
“I’ll deal with him.” He walked over and dragged me back across the lobby as a handful of guards properly searched down Percy and took her phone. Thankfully, my phone was safe in the car.
Orion led me back to the lobby's side room. All that the room had was a stupidly long conference table, a water dispenser, and a TV from the early 2000s on the back wall. Orion walked down halfway down the room and stood next to the table. I stayed by the door.
“So, Orion, what kind of fucked up operation are you running here, exactly?”
He stared at me creepily as if I just cracked a joke at his mother’s funeral. “Why would I tell you that?”
“Why would I tell you what I’m doing here?”
“Because there are 30 guards in that room who could have gunned you down if Jax gave so much as a head motion.”
“But he wasn’t going to do that. You want to know why we broke in before you resort to killing us. Why?”
He pulled a chair out and sat down. “Alright. If it helps get answers out of you, I'll give you an answer as well. First of all, do you remember your 'business' with a recent charity called Solaris?”
My breath retreated from my body the instant he said that name. Wait, how the fuck does he… what?!
A thousand different thoughts were racing through my head at the same moment, and I couldn’t translate any of them into words.
“First,” he continued, “you targeted a puppet company of ours and made off with over $2 million, plus the one and a half million lost to those thirteen other businesses. And then days later, by sheer coincidence, we find that those same people have been looking around for information on Eclipse. It seems only natural that we’d assume you were targeting us as an entity, don’t you think?”
Adrian. That motherfucker is the one who got us into this, he had to have known. Son of a fucking bitch. But at least they don’t know about the informant, I hopefully threw them off that scent earlier. I can’t tell Orion that, though.
“Fucking hell.” I dug my nails into the chair next to me. “You must have quite a lot of enemies if you’re jumping right to assuming that we’re one of them. That seems a little suspicious, doesn’t it?” He didn’t respond. “So what, you just fucking waited for us to show up? How could you have possibly known where we were going to be?”
“As I said before: why would I ever tell you that?”
“We already sealed our fate by coming here, didn’t we? What harm could it do?”
“I think we both know exactly what kind of harm that could do. We all saw that guard pull Percy’s earpiece out, and I don’t think 911 was on the other line.”
“You seem to be implying something that you think I’m supposed to know about.”
“Linda Rondman, the CEO of Solaris, said that there were four people she was in contact with who claimed to represent your company. I don’t see four of you that tried to break into Eclipse.”
Fuck, Korey was one of those people. She could get caught up in this if they go after the company.
“Well, how do you know I don’t have a microphone in my pocket right now?” I said that with my earpiece still hanging out inconspicuously in the pocket of my massive pair of pants.
“I don’t, but it wouldn’t matter at this point if you did. If your friends didn’t know about the situation before, they do now. It’s just a matter of whether they will come for you or not.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Yeah. I guess it is.” I sat down at the conference table.
We’re only being kept alive as bargaining chips right now, but Graham and Skyler are hours away from here. If they heard Jax from Percy’s earpiece, they should know we’re in danger, but what could they possibly do to get us out before Jax loses his patience? I’m certainly not counting on Adrian somehow rescuing us. They don't know where we are or that the building is heavily guarded, and they certainly won’t stand a chance facing off with any of the goons up here. Fuck, I really shouldn’t have hung up that call with Graham.
My oversized work clothes served no purpose anymore and were starting to get stuffy, so I pulled off the XXL shirt and the 36x38 pants and tossed them into the corner. I’m just lucky I had other clothes on underneath.
“What should we prepare for if they do?” Orion asked.
I snorted. “Whatever it is you prepare for, you’re not going to be prepared for what happens.”
That might have been a lie, but as he would say, why would I ever tell him that?
---
Backpack, suitcase, jacket, phone… alright. Percy should have everything else. I combed the room one more time before taking my stuff downstairs. Percy was waiting on the couch with her own backpack and luggage, along with a mysterious duffel bag.
“What’s supposed to be in there?” I asked her.
“Kitchen stuff. You didn’t think we were going to eat exclusively from restaurants, did you?”
“I figured the hotel would have already had shit like that, but whatever. Where’s Adrian?”
“Still in his room repacking everything he unpacked a few weeks ago.”
“Ouch.”
Skyler was leaning against the back of the couch, staring at the birdcage on the table by the front window. She wanted to join us on the trip but couldn’t because the bird would then have to be taken care of by Graham, and he can barely be trusted to take care of himself, let alone another living animal. I’m sure Graham will be happy to have company for the week, however much of a nuisance his own company is sure to be.
I dropped my stuff by the door and sat next to Percy. “Have you ever stayed in a hotel room before?” she asked.
“Maybe a few times as a kid. My family never really traveled anywhere unless we were moving.”
“Huh. That makes sense.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“There are never kitchen supplies in a hotel room, Finn. You’d be lucky if there was even a kitchen at all, especially in the 20s-style hotel we’re staying at.”
We had started packing half an hour ago. I took extra long because my headphones went missing, but Adrian barely took anything with him when he came back. He should have finished packing up first, and yet he didn’t.
A minute passed. Then another minute passed. Then five passed. Still no sign of Adrian. “What the hell is taking him so long?” I said to Percy.
“I don’t know. I’m gonna go check on him.” She walked through the kitchen to his room. I heard her knock on his door, then open and shut it.
I looked over at Skyler, still staring idly at the bird. “So… how much money do you still have?”
She was silent for a moment, almost as if she didn’t hear me, before saying, “Enough.” Another awkward silence ensued, still with no sign of Percy or Adrian, until she randomly commented, “I think King should get a friend.” Right. The bird’s name is King now.
“Friend? As in a female friend?”
“Why not?”
“Right, because if this place is missing one thing, it’s baby birds.”
“I just don’t want him to be alone in that cage all the time. He deserves at least some company in there.”
“He isn’t alone though, you watch over him 24/7.”
“I'm not going to be watching over him every single day forever. I have a life of my own too, in case you forgot.”
I snorted. “Oh please, don’t pretend like you aren’t going to revolve your entire life around that bird for at least another month.”
“It could be two birds. You never know.”
“You probably do. And I doubt my opinion counts for jack shit when it comes to him.”
“Now you’re starting to get it.”
I tilted over to peek inside the kitchen. What the fuck are they doing in there? I audibly sighed and slumped back on the couch, tapping my feet on the floor.
Skyler leaned over the couch. “Hey, none of you ever told me what the plan was in Cincinnati.”
That came as a surprise. I figured that Graham would have mouthed off to her the second after the plan was formulated. “Oh. Well, there isn’t much to do based on what limited information we have, so Percy and I are just gonna sneak our way inside the HQ and bug the place. The chips have a microphone and will give us access to the camera of any computers they end up in, which will be freshly delivered to us tomorrow courtesy of Brice and company.”
“And how do you plan on getting inside?”
“The area is getting hit with a huge snowstorm right now, so I’ll be going in disguised as a repair guy. I’ll steal the uniform from whoever I find, and make my way in to fix whatever our anonymous informant decides to damage and blame on the weather. Percy has a different plan of getting in involving air vents in the parking garage or something. I missed most of that discussion, cause… y’know, her new terminal BFF.” Adrian’s door finally opened. “Well, speak of the devil.”
Percy walked back to the living room with Adrian, who was carrying a single backpack. “Probably a stupid question, but are you ready, Finn?”
“That was definitely a stupid question.” I stood up. “But yes. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I grabbed all my shit by the door, said goodbye to Skyler, and trudged out of the door.
Awesome. Now I get to sit in a car with Adrian for four hours. This week is gonna be a fucking blast.
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