At the lunch hour, Six noticed that her breakfast food was still on her dinner table, untouched, and that Holiday, even though she had managed to get as properly dressed as possible, wearing the accustomed pajamas he remembered, with longer pants, was still in bed and looking straight up to the ceiling, seemingly thinking.
"Holiday," he greeted her after closing the door behind him, but she simply turned her face to look at him for a second and then looked back up at the ceiling, wondering if she indeed had to talk to him about what had happened in the morning. Pushing herself up as much as she could, before he could even suggest that he would help her, she simply sat in her bed with her legs dangling out of the wooden frame and caressing her abdomen for a moment where her body had met the floor of her bathroom, then looked up at the man who was now looking at her now cold breakfast and wondering if he should save it for later or just take it back with him.
New sheets were neatly folded on her dinner table with her discarded bloody clothes and towels. She sincerely doubted that Six had gone through her clothes to even clean her underwear along with it, since that wasn't one of his tasks, so she decided not to ask who was doing the laundry for her and focus on what she had to tell him. "My journal is in my bedside table. Could you take it, please, and read it before passing it to White?"
He simply nodded, turning to look at her with an arched eyebrow and walking to her bedside table to take the piece of paper, wondering how she was able to still write even after being that badly injured. His eyes went from line to line, stopping a few times if he couldn't understand a sentence since her handwriting looked shaky in some of the words where she was describing the events she had experienced so far.
"This is..." he started, but she shook her head, closing her eyes and caressing her abdomen again, that she had managed to clean and cover as much as Six had with the rest of her wounds.
"Don't say that it's stupid and that I'm simply worrying too much."
"I wasn't going to say that," he replied, to her surprise. His voice was eerily quiet and less sarcastic than what she expected as the man walked to take one of the chairs from her table and sat on it, crossing one of his legs over the other and softly brushing his eyelids behind his glasses with two of his fingers as if trying to find the right words to talk about something he had no knowledge of. Talking about emotions and thoughts wasn't precisely his forte; all he did was simply follow orders, think of a plan A, B, C, whatever, and execute it. Emotions and feelings were an unexplored territory that he never dared to even think of.
Only after he met her and Rex, especially her.
"I was about to say that I think I can understand it," he said, his shoulders relaxing for a fraction of a moment before tensing back. "Your fall was probably caused by a lack of quality sleep and your...sadness," she thought that it was the first time she had heard him use such a word. "And now we have to add to the equation that you decided to skip your breakfast as well."
"My entire body was simply hurting too much, so I thought that after resting it would get better," She continued causing Six to sigh at her words.
"I suppose you covered the rest of your injuries," he asked, noticing her hand still laying over her stomach. "And hopefully nothing is broken."
"The medical ward can't come down anyway for any X-Ray or test that I could need."
"White arranged for mobile equipment to be transported here to ensure there are no broken bones. We still need to repair the shower door, so some of the soldiers whom we trust enough to disclose your location, will make sure to be patrolling around while everything is done. I believe I heard White say that he would come to visit you in a few days, to make sure your injuries aren't too serious."
"The least I want is to be a burden for White, so you can tell him that it is not necessary and that it might raise too many suspicions as to why he would be going into the underground facilities for apparently no reason."
"We have not yet decided what to do; we should have a meeting in a couple of days regarding our findings about this organization. Messages keep coming and going, but even Rex has not been able to decipher the code they are using to transmit their signal. It does not seem like the kind of equipment we have here, so it is either much more advanced than ours or much older than ours and the coding is in binary numbers that perhaps only you and your division could crack. We will decide how much influence you will have in this investigation, without alerting them that you are still on Providence."
"If they have as much money as White suspects, why would they use outdated technology to communicate, if it would risk our own network bouncing their signal back easily?"
"Perhaps that is precisely the case. It would bounce it back and maybe stop it from going further, but since it is outdated, it would be less easy to track. And if they have the resources, perhaps it is a free code that our network does not have any knowledge of."
"Why go through so much trouble just to threaten me, instead of simply attacking Providence as Van Kleiss would do without any issue? Why keep themselves behind computers and cellphones if a simple, well-coordinated attack, would simply take me by surprise?"
"It might have to do with Rex and even with me, as they surely know how many times we have stopped Van Kleiss or any other enemy that crossed our paths."
"And did they just simply expect me to surrender willingly just because they stole part of my research and want me to finish it for them?"
"They are already doubling their efforts and going through your past to look for any information they could use to bring you back from your supposed AWOL. So perhaps we should talk about it now, so that we are on the same page, before something happens that we could regret."
Her past? What could be on any file that they could use, if White always made sure to literally erase them from the planet and keep their identities concealed?
"What could they even know that could be so important? White already has everything, including your own information, with him. And I suppose that he doesn't have an entire database on a simple computer for them to just hack and use against us."
"If the signal keeps transmitting, even if it ends up bouncing back after the message is received, there's still a chance that the rest of the departments could end up as compromised as yours is. I don't doubt that he could have all of our information on paper, secretly hidden, but there's also an entire profile of every team member working for Providence as each computer tracks your digital prints, recognizing you and letting you enter each door the facility has. For that, the computer must at least know that you don't represent a threat for Providence."
"C'mon Six, if no one knows anything about you anyways. What could the computer know about your identity as to not consider you a threat?"
"The database knows what White wants it to know. So, yes, it knows part of my past that White decided does not compromise me or One or any of the rest of my old teammates."
"Oh?" She asked, raising her eyebrows. "I know about what our database is capable of doing, but I didn't know it was as sentient enough as to discern that one day you could just end up becoming crazy and decide to betray us, yet still open the doors for you just because you decided to work with White after departing from One and the others."
"In a hypothetical case that it could happen, White would have to just erase my past as he did when I decided to join forces with him. Because, as you remember quite well, we didn't have one of the best possible introductions and practically acted hostile to each other; I remember you calling me "just another soldier with guns."
"I didn't know that my words were that important as to be remembered for this long," she said, offended at the thought that the man could still be holding that against her and feeling even worse after seeing his trademarked sarcastic smile all plastered on his face.
Sighing again, Six decided to leave the report on the table and raised both of his hands up as if in a sign of peace, keeping his gaze on the woman in bed but this time taking his glasses off and folding them to hang them in the only front pocket of his green jacket. As if it would make their conversation even more personal, as Rex had been right in the many advices the teen thought he needed.
If his eyes were the windows to his soul and he preferred to keep them closed, he thought that at least she deserved the minimum respect if she had to talk about her personal information.
He insisted, his eyes never stopped looking at hers.
"Alright," she finally agreed, knowing that looping the conversation wouldn't end in anything good. "Only if we drink something other than just water. I need something stronger instead to go through this."
Instead of asking how bad it could be, the man simply agreed and handed a plate that she supposed was her lunch. "No drinking on an empty stomach after what happened," was his condition, taking his own meal after making sure that she wouldn't complain. And he was right; she was hungry after skipping her breakfast and her aching abdomen was also complaining from the inside.
"Do you promise me that this will be kept as a secret between you and me, and perhaps White?"
"Of course. There's no reason why Rex should know any of this. Either Bobo. Besides, they're always prone to get kidnapped anyways, so it's better to cover our backs."
They ate in silence as Holiday thought she needed a moment to put her past in order and perhaps leave out some embarrassing things that the man didn't need to know or wanted to. If it was for her safety, then there were some limits that she could draw and that he shouldn't even question.
"What do you wish to drink?" was his first question as he knew that he had to leave the room and then return with whatever she wanted. All she had in there were beers and he doubted that she meant that as a strong drink. "Keep in mind your overall health. Nothing too crazy."
"What about a bit of cognac?" she suggested and Six pondered how stupid the idea could be since her walking was already quite limited due to her wounds and her current mental state. But he was there anyways. So what was the worst thing that could happen if he made sure that she slept after their conversation? Another potential fall?
"Good, wait for me then," were his words as he put his glasses back up and stood up to walk out of the room. "It will only take me a couple of minutes."
"Yes, since I suppose there must be an open bar upstairs," she replied, as the man smirked and tilted his head to the side to look at her with his back already turned to her.
"I have my own ways of getting what I need..."
Rubbing her forehead after he left, Holiday made up her mind to ask him about his past as well, if he was capable of saying such things so blatantly.