“Thanks…” I decided to take the lead and become the friendly face my job demanded me to be. The cameras were on, as well as the microphones, running across the ceiling to reach every one of our conversations and gestures, so I had to keep my wits. I couldn’t appear flustered or affected by the night before, especially not when I had another three weeks to spend in the company of this man. Male. Best thing to do was start fresh and set some ground rules.
Keep a foot away must be the first one, because my skin still trembled with unfelt caresses and need.
“Have you had breakfast already?” I asked, taking in a full breath and preparing myself to find those emerald eyes, those adamant locks and that godlike physique of his.
I blinked. Once. twice, my regard slipping across the room, checking the weights, the benches and other gym equipment I had not seen before and wasn’t able to name.
Gale was nowhere to be found.
I swung my head across the room and forced my eyes to focus, glowering and dipping to every surface, every corner, every hole. No sign of him.
“Gale?”
Nothing. Radio silence.
“Gale?” I said again, pushing the bedroom door open and running into the bathroom, hoping that the faerie might have gone in there after a full night of being locked away.
“Where are you?”
I ran across the rooms, I even opened my wardrobe should he want to play a prank on me and hide in plain sight. There was no sign of the faerie.
“Oh, my gods…” I started hyperventilating, my legs losing strength, my balance affected and making my body swing to the side. I grabbed the doorframe and leaned against the wooden surface, forcing my body against it and pushing back to hold myself onto something because the world had just escaped from under my legs.
I lost a subject.
I had lost a subject, because I’d been too entitled and unfocused. I put myself first, my needs and terrors had claimed my mind rather than my duty, rather than my mission.
I lost a subject…
The hint of disappointment brushed the air, filled with failure and defeat, all of them wrapped around my name. I had only one mission, one assignment primordial to all. Do my job.
And I had catastrophically failed at it.
Just then the tablet thought to ping for my attention, the sound of a new instruction making me crawl to the nightstand and grip it between shaky fingers. It took me three attempts to slide the screen open and read the new instruction.
“Keep Gale in good health.”
Instruction to be completed in twenty-four hours.
Had they not seen it happen? Were they not present for his escape? What was their plan? Slowly torture me until I drowned in self-defeat?
With a rigid frame, I stepped in the living room to make myself visible to the cameras.
“Can’t you see he’s gone?”
The words barely escaped me, my throat raw and struggling to keep a wail in.
“The subject will be returned to the living quarters shortly. Please follow the instruction displayed on your tablet,” the robotic voice responded, so different from the human tone of PDD. My focus jumped to the information.“The subject will be returned…”
On their own accord, my legs led me to the wall where I knew the door would be, sealed shut with no hints of forced exit, no blunt hits or even a drop of paint out of place. As far as I knew, that was the only way out. Not including the moving floor that brought the faerie to me, which I had no idea how to control.
Judging by this, the instruction I had received and the robotic voice that spoke to me as if nothing had happened, I came to one conclusion. Gale had been removed from the room.
And I had nothing to do but wait.
After gulping down some breakfast, which in fact was more lunch due to the time I finally decided to eat because Gale did not seem to be returning soon, I decided to clean the living quarters. I directed my attention to the bathroom first, part of me knowing that it would probably be the place of most interest for the fae, then I cleaned my bedroom and started picking up the cans and remains of food left around the gym machines.
On a tray by the side of the bedroom door, I found a full plate of roast meat, potatoes and steamed vegetables, along with a glass of water and a chocolate muffin.
