Chapter 10: The Special Facility
"You are capable of so much greater and yet you do nothing."
Henry closed his eyes for a moment before opening them. The girl, Spinner, was there again to check up on him as she did constantly. Her crush kept him from being reprimanded and punished for his disobedience, but it was only going to last so long. She was catching on to him, how slow he was going at his work. For an imbalanced, uneducated girl, she was smarter than he first thought. She acted naive a lot, asked him questions to answer and said "wow!" a lot but he could tell by the way she put numbers on a chalkboard with such grace that she was hiding herself as he was.
He looked up at the small woman—26 years old, he had learned—with long black hair today that was in two braids. Her eyes were big and wide, childlike but scary. She saw things he wanted to hide. Like his disgust for the place he was in, his unrest at wanting to go home and his impatience at Will to wise up and get them the both the hell out of Balefire.
"We both know that you can do so much better. Why won't you?" She asked, a hint of hurt in her voice. She walked to him, and put her hands on his shoulders. He tried not to flinch and an image of Kate filled his mind for some reason. As she began to knead the knots out of his shoulders unsolicited, Henry filled his mind with someone else to endure. When she stopped, she went around him to look at the memory column he was working on for the giant brain she still told him nothing about. "It's brilliant, what you're doing. But this is only how far you've gotten? You know Ramos; he'll 'encourage' you if you don't start picking up the pace. I don't want anything bad to happen to you Henry."
Ramos. The Jackal. He had given Henry a black eye the first week there for not showing proper 'respect' to a peacekeeper of the facility.
The jackass.
"Of course not. You don't want anything to happen to me, that's why you haven't let me see goddamn fucking sunlight in half a month!" Henry gruffed, throwing his screwdriver onto the table. Spinner lept back a foot, tearing up.
"Henry, I'm so sorry. But you know that this is important to us, that we need to get it done as soon as possible or the other facility will die without it and please don't be mad I want you to like me…"
Henry looked up at her and mentally kicked himself. She wasn't so bad, she was only taking orders and she was misguided. And useful.
Wait.
"The other facility will die? Is that what you said?"
Spinner flinched. "Uh. No. That is not what I said."
Henry got up from his stool and walked to her. He got closer and could see her start to shiver. He had never had an effect like this on a girl before but was beginning to jackass-ly like it.
She slipped up. Only for a moment but she had slipped up. The technology they were working on was far too advanced for it to come from today and the warehouses that she had blurted out before had to be the answer. But a place that would die without a giant brain?
"Please. I want to know. And I promise to work harder." He tried to soften his voice, remembering Ashley Magnus's guide to getting out of a speeding ticket. 1. Soft voice 2. Touch of skin 3. Smile.
He stroked the inside of Spinner's wrist, feeling the heat of her body and smelling lemon grass for some reason. She looked up at him, her eyes lavender that day.
"It's the heart of another facility. A special facility. One that the Cabal nearly destroyed during the Sanctuary War. We have to transplant this brain into that one." She whispered, and then bit her lip. He kept on looking at her like she was the center of his world, feeling like a world-class scumbag. But he kept looking. She continued, "It's a special place. Old. Very old. But very important. A doorway—"
"Kasee!" A voice screeched from the doorway. The head of mission duties, Parker, was at the doorway. He glared. "So…trying to get into her pants for information. Real smooth co-patriot."
Henry stepped back from Spinner who looked at him as if for the first time. "For information…" she repeated. "For information…"
Henry took a breath and rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry. It's not like you're holding me prisoner here or anything. And I'm the tech guy and I'm trying to fix the heart of a facility that will die without it and I don't know ANYTHING ABOUT IT SO FUCKING SUE ME!"
Spinner and Parker looked at each other. Parker burst out laughing and gestured to Spinner. "Tell him. Worst case scenario we just kill him." And walked out.
Henry looked at Spinner who was slightly seething from the 'get into her pants' comment. She took a deep breath.
"The place is a doorway. Simple."
"A doorway to what?"
"Wonderland."