Hey everyone! I have been working hard to update as soon as I was able, successfully not repeating my last update schedule :P
This chapter dwelves a little into Silvester's feelings after the last mission and we start to see things connecting slowly, I really enjoyed writing it!
NOTE: As I was finishing this chapter I realised that I messed up the dates on the last three chapters, so I will update them accordingly.
We're at 60 reviews now, I can't believe it! Think we can push it a little more to 70?
Hope you enjoy!
June 6, 2017
Paige was sitting on her desk, finishing paperwork when the team arrived from their roadtrip, they all looked haggard and tired but satisfied. Paige and Sam got up and went to congratulate them when they got into the garage.
"I have settled things with the hospital and they have decided to give us a special bonus for the snafoo with the TB virus, so extra for everyone!" She exclaimed, happy that at least their suffering had some reward. All the team was ecstatic that it had at least been worth something and decided to celebrate with some beers at the kitchen to unwind and internalise all the events of the day. While they went for the beers Toby was berating Happy for being careless and putting herself in danger, she was brushing it off, saying that he hadn't stopped yapping since they left the hospital.
"I had to hear this all the flight back!"
"You aren't too late to cancel the wedding." Responded Cabe in a joking manner, which followed with a collective laughter. Toby replied something indignated, but Paige stopped listening to him, Silvester wasn't there.
She looked around while the team was still laughing at some quip that the mechanic had said in response to the doctor, and found him sitting at his desk stunned, looking at his own hands that were restless sitting on the table. She decided to approach him alone, to not stress him out more than he looked.
"Silvester?" She asked, as softly as possible to not scare him when she arrived next to him at his desk. He jumped even with her calming tone, he was definitely on edge. She waited until he looked at her and continued talking "Are you okay? Everyone is celebrating the bonus, don't you want anything?" She made it sound as inviting as she possibly could, in the hopes that it would calm him down from the state he was in.
"No, thanks Paige, I'm fine here." Sly said with a really small voice. He started to look down again, clearly not fine. She decided to figure out what was up.
"What are you doing over here?" She continued as she softly took Toby's chair and scooted it over to be next to him.
"Just thinking." The mathematician responded absentmindedly. It was at that moment that she realised that he was sweating and his hands were trembling, he was about to have a panic attack.
"Talk to me Sly, I'm right here." She continued, still as open as possible. He looked up at her, unsure.
"I'm just...thinking about the mission and stuff." He still looked worried.
"Everyone got out safe and we accomplished the mission, you did a fantastic job Sly." She responded, smiling. He looked at her, unsure of what to say.
"I don't think I can keep working at Scorpion." He said finally after pausing for a long time.
"What? Why?" She asked, momentarily stunned. Her strong reaction to his last statement had startled Sly again, so she took a second to gather herself and regain her calm tone. "What do you mean?" She continued, this time calmer.
"I don't think it's made for me." Was his only explanation, looking dejected.
"But it is Sly, this place was for all of you, to have a safe place." She answered him.
"I know, but…" Silvester looked like he needed to say something but wasn't able to. "...but it doesn't feel like a safe place anymore." Paige was realising what it was about.
"Because of Walter, right?" She continued for him.
Sly jumped when Paige mentioned his friend, not expecting her to talk about the issue so openly. After a second to compose himself he nodded in agreement.
"It was just that...he helped me get out of a really bad situation before Scorpion, urged me to face my fears and become a better person. He was always there to support me, to support the whole team to be better." A sigh escaped him. "But now...that support is gone. I haven't felt this unsafe since before Scorpion." He looked directly at Paige now. "Every mission that we do I feel like I'm swimming against a giant current. It's draining me." He finished, deflating a little. Paige could relate perfectly to what he meant, she felt the same way sometimes when she thought about him.
"Silvester, I understand what you mean." She smiled fondly at him. "I have felt the same way a few times since Walter."
"You have?" He asked, surprised. "How do you do it then? How do you have the strength to keep going?"
"You know that for quite some time I wasn't really myself, I still feel like I'm not me sometimes." Sly nodded. She took a pause to remember those dark days where she was a shell of herself, consumed by grief. "Ralph made me realise that there are still things worth fighting for, himself, Walter's baby and Scorpion, things that Walter wouldn't want me to waste away." She got closer to Silvester looking him straight in the eye to really make her point.
"Walter didn't give Scorpion to me, you or anyone else, he gave it to us as a team, to all of us, because he knew that we could face whatever was to come. Even if he's gone Silvester, he had the belief that if we were together we could pull through. You are not alone, you have us to rely on when you feel you're drowning now. Because even if he has left us, his idea of Scorpion still lives within us." Paige finished.
Silvester seemed to ponder what she had told him for a couple of seconds. The silence made her think about what she said to the mathematician as well, she really didn't know where all of that had come from. Replaying in her mind old conversations she had had with Toby, Ralph, Kiara and Sam she realised that gradually her feelings about her situation were changing. That was the first moment that she realised that she could be happy with the life that was waiting on her. These past months had been really dark, but she was somehow able to see past all that pain now, putting her newfound feelings into words.
Sam had realised that Paige and Silvester weren't with them celebrating in the kitchen, looking around the garage discreetly he was able to find them talking calmly at the other side of the garage, on Sly's desk. The mathematician looked distressed while the liason had a reassuring stance, but she didn't provide any kind of physical comfort. Being a germaphobe, a pat on the back or a hug would have been more stressful and damaging for him than a calm voice and smile, and Paige knew that well. Sam had known the whole team for quite a while now and he was still impressed sometimes with how accustomed they were to each other. They still had their disagreements and arguments, but behind there was a layer of love and understanding with each other, as he could see with the actual situation. He discreetly looked around the people gathered in the kitchen and realised that all of them were aware of the location of the two missing people in the kitchen, they knew that Paige was calming Silvester down and realised that the best course of action was to not interfere with that. That realisation alone made him crook a small smile while he took a swig of the beer in his hand.
Paige hadn't realised that she had been in a trance until the laugh of Cabe coming from the kitchen made her jump. Looking up at Silvester she realised that he was in the same state as her, figuring out his own feelings on the whole situation. The man looked at her with renewed confidence then, something she had said had reached and given him renewed courage.
"Thanks Paige, you're right."He said with a small smile forming on his lips. "We have each other to lean on, I have gone this far already, I can't quit now."
"You're welcome." She answered, a smile appearing on her lips as well. "We can always talk on such moments, I am the EQ coach of this team after all." Her smile grew a little bigger with her joke. That made Sly smile wider as well.
"Okay, let's do this then." He said as he rose from his chair with renewed energy.
"What do you mean?" Paige got up as well, infected by his positive energy.
Sensing the shift in morale and seeing Silvester get up made Sam look directly at them.
"Everything ok, Sly?" He asked, as casually as he could while the rest of the team intently looked as well.
"I didn't say it before because I needed some time to gather myself, but I found something when I did the sweep of the hospital computer." He responded, smiling. That made everyone stop on their tracks.
"You did? Well, then what are you waiting for? Tell us." Cabe smiled at the mathematician.
Silvester complied, eager to show everyone his findings.
A couple of minutes later everyone was gathered at the table in the center of the garage, looking at the giant screen that they used to plan their missions with Sly's computer hooked on.
"While I was looking around for info about the hacker I found a couple of interesting things." He said as he opened different files. "First, I found the headline of the study the hackers stole." A headline popped into the screen.
"Study of the mind: a step closer to telepathy." Happy read out loud with raised eyebrows. "Are you kidding?" She turned around, talking to the whole team. "This is what we had to bust our asses off? It sounds like a crappy study made by a nutcase."
"Do you have anything else pertaining to the papers?" Toby asked Sly directly. "Maybe I can figure something out, it looks like a psychology study to me."
"I tried to gather more info, but the hacker erased the whole file from the database, even from the backup servers, all that I was able to scar was the title and the researcher's name." He answered, showing the name of a doctor on the screen.
"Wait a second…" Tobias said while he thought about something. "I have heard the name of this doctor before…" He paced, thinking. Everyone looked at him, on edge. "That's doctor Webber!" He said excitedly when the realisation hit. Everyone gave back blank stares, no one knew what he was talking about. "She's a highly revered doctor in the psychology field! She uses this name..." He continued, pointing at the name on the screen. "...when she is working incognito! There has to be something to that study." He finished, happy.
"Let me see…" Silvester typed something on the keyboard and some more info came into view. "The file was created eight months ago, and was last edited...a month later?" He finished, confused. He turned to look at Tobias directly. "Is it usual for this kind of research to be finished in such a short time?"
"Not really." The doctor answered. "Research takes quite some time because of the proof needed to acquire to make it viable, especially in issues related to psychology, a lot of time needs to pass to be able to really see the results." He started to get lost in thought.
"So it was interrupted?" Sam was starting to catch on about what Toby was implying.
"It might have been stopped for unspecified reasons… Maybe someone forced them to abandon the project? I find it hard to believe that Webber decided to stop the Study willingly unless she found something amiss."
"So this project is a lot more than what it seems." Happy concluded for him.
"It looks that way." Her fiance finished. "We will have to look more into it."
For some moments the garage was again silent as the team thought about the findings on that strange research paper that was stolen. Paige was the first one to talk.
"Congratulations on your findings Silvester!" She said animatedly as she lightly patted him on the back. "Now we have more stuff to work on." She finished with a smile as the mathematician looked at her, grateful for her praise. Soon enough everyone joined in congratulating him, enveloping him in a warm and familiar sensation, the feeling of family.
Something wasn't right. It was all that Rhino could think about as he looked at his screen late at night, trying to go unnoticed by the rest of inhabitants of the complex. He had read through the document from MGH countless times now and it still wasn't clicking what was Collins' endgame. R had been a dutiful follower, not asking questions and doing what was asked of him, but he was more on edge everyday. There were things that Mark wasn't telling him, even if he was greatly favored by him and that added to his already mounting stress, what was his objective? After a couple of more minutes he decided to stop obsessing about it at the moment, his head was starting to hurt.
Instead Rhino decided to review the mission itself and found himself wondering what it would be like if he was surrounded by a group as close-knit as Scorpion, not truly an enterprise but a family, people helping people achieve their greatest potential and supporting them through their worst times. He sighed, thinking of his lost chance at a family.
Before closing his computer for the night he stared for a while at his last message to Sam Wilkings. He must have figured out already his hidden message, making the initial cogs of his plan start to move. It would be a long road ahead of him but knowing that it was for a worthy reason he smiled, imagining how he would take Mark Collins down for good at last.
Everytime I write Rhino's POV I start to like him a little bit more, it's really fun to write an ambiguous and mysterious character. For now all that we know is that he is suspicious of Collins and he is helping Scorpion from the shadows oOo What would be his reasons? We won't know for now, you'll have to wait a bit to find out.
I have been working on this chapter while on my breaks from work (not in my field) so I have a little more time to work on my friting these days, we'll see if I'm able to keep the good pace one the updates! ;)