Chapter Nine- Mysteries Unsolved
Perhaps the Freelancers expected less of a punishment for deserting if they told the Director why they had left. Perhaps they just wanted him to know why they left. Or maybe it was just to shut him up. No-one would know which, aside from the Freelancers whom were just returning from their impromptu mission, with little end benefit to their leaving. At least, the Director thought that. The group of Freelancers had all been careful to omit that it was a member from Rae's old ODST squad whom had programmed that robot to kill Oregon. Mostly because that would mean referencing their lives from before Project Freelancer, something the Director forbade, and even Iowa could concede that angering the man more would be stupid. So, this left the Freelancers, upon returning, with 2 hours to pack away all of their things, hide them, and get ready for the Cryogenic suspension.
It was fortunate, then, that Rae didn't own all that much as far as possessions go. She had already hidden away everything of value, so it was more of a two-hour wait for a punishment. The Director wanted them to hide their personal items so no-one would ask about what the items were doing, and he would personally wipe their names from the Project's database, making them non-entities for the time while they were asleep.
Rae mostly just rested on her now-plain bed and reflected on what had happened. In half an hour, she found most of her questions raised towards Tracer.
Why would he betray us?
Was he forced to?
What could force him to betray us?
Why kill Oregon, not any of the other, weaker Freelancers at the makeshift camp?
Was the robot aiming for me?
Why leave the robot at the nearest camp to the Freelancers?
Why put us on his trail?
Why couldn't Hack find him?
All of these questions started to give Rae a headache. As she kneaded her temples with her knuckles, the door opened. Iowa, who had clearly just finished hiding her things, probably somewhere insane, collapsed onto her own bed.
"Tired?" Rae asked her best friend, whom nodded.
"At least after this we'll get the longest lie-in ever." Rae told her, making Iowa snort with laughter.
When the group arrived at the cryogenics bay, where there was a scientist setting everything up, shooting Michigan the odd dirty look.
"What'd you do to annoy him?" CO asked.
"Might've 'accidentally'," The emphasis on that told everyone that it was clearly intentional, whatever he did, "Turned off all of the cryogenic stations just to annoy him." The scientist then threw a pen at Michigan, whom caught it with relative ease. The soft blue lighting of the room made his normally vibrant green skin look diseased, and pale. It wasn't a good look.
After another ten minutes of waiting for the scientist to finish setting up the cryogenic system, the group all climbed into the pods. Michigan shot the scientist a cocky smirk, as said scientist flipped the genius off as he climbed in. As Rae felt the entire pod freeze and the glass in front of her begin to frost over, she gave a slight wave to the outside, before everything went blank.
