The Henhouse

Control

"There's something else we need to do. Besides finding Cas."

Gabe jogged down the corridor while speaking. Ivy, with one arm swung around Peter, struggled to keep pace. Even Justin, unburdened, now felt out of breath. He wondered if it was morning by now. Time had lost meaning a while ago- muffled by monotone walls, lost in a labyrinth of corridors.

"Yeah," Jonah griped. "We should all probably get the hell out of here."

"Well, yes," said Gabe. He careened around a corner. "But before that. The other PI, Berta-"

"Dr. Dreschler," Ivy eeked out.

"Yes. Dr. Dreschler. We should find her. She's nice. She's got a family...."

Peter sighed. "What about Dr. Lowery?"

"Ed?"

Gabe's voice lifted as he turned to face Peter. His steps slowed.

"You saw him? ...Is he okay?"

Peter looked to Ivy, then-

"He's fine," Justin lied, looking Peter carefully in the eyes. He turned to Gabe.

"We- we saw him with some kind of guard, it seemed like he was still working on the- uh, project. But... I mean, there wasn't anything we could do-"

"It's fine." Gabe nodded. "It would have been stupid to try and get in the way. We'll look for him on our way out of here." He started jogging again. "I just hope he stays okay. These kinds of people... you can never be sure what they'll do...."

Justin felt Peter staring holes into his back. He turned, shrugging. He couldn't regret lying; it was safer that way.

They needed to keep moving, whatever it took....

"Where are we going now?" Artie asked. He still seemed the most skeptical; eyes narrowing whenever they fell on his black curls.

"The guard said Instructional Wing; we're going to the Instructional Wing."

"They still don't know that you're... a double agent... thing. Right?" Jonah asked. "You're one of them. Shouldn't you know where he is already?"

Gabe shook his head. "People like them... they never share everything. This was a last resort; they knew most of us wouldn't like it. ...Honor among thieves, I guess."

Their footsteps pattered down the hallways before Gabe halted at another split, and frowned.

"Ah- It should be this way...."

"Do you think-?" Peter hesistated. Justin noticed the fingers of his good hand flexing in and out.

Hm?"

"Ah... I said... um... do you think that...." He sighed. "Well, that some of us could be more... valuable to them than others? With the different... intelligences, and all."

No one answered, but the pace slowed again. Jonah's jaw tensed as she looked down to the floor; Dany grabbed a hand gently, shuffling closer to her as they walked. Ella and Justin looked to each other inexplicably, and he suddenly wanted to wait for her, walk by her side.....

"No." Gabe's voice was unsteady. "Every one of you is important. If one of you wasn't, they wouldn't have bothered-"

"Why not?" Jonah answered. "I mean, the more the merrier while we're all here, right? But when it comes down to it.... If they had to choose...."

Her mouth puckered like she'd just bit into a lemon. "Well, the math genius is much better than the girl who can- I dunno, identify a tree...."

"That's not true," Ivy said softly. "You think I'm special? There's a million people out there who do the same thing I do, only better."

"Oh, thanks," Dany scoffed.

"You don't understand," said Ella. "She's saying there's a lot of people out there, good at lots of different things! You could be- well, you could be a prodigy-"

"When I've never played music in my life?"

"It's easy to learn-"

"Look, I don't want to play, okay?" Dany shrugged. "I don't care if I might be really good at it; it's not what I want to do. I don't care about being a prodigy. I just need to be valuable enough to them to make it out of this place."

"We shouldn't have to worry about this," Peter sighed. "We shouldn't be here...."

"Working on that bit." Gabe spotted another fire escape map and was jogging over to look.

"This way," he said, pointing to their left. "We're close."

They all rounded the corner and accelerated. When Justin's eyes fell on a door swung ajar on their right, he slowed again.

"Justin?"

"Come on, we need to hurry up!"

Justin ignored them. He neared the doorway and caught glimpses of grainy TV screens, and a control panel with red and green lights blinking on it like a Christmas tree.

"Survellance system," he told the others. "It's all in here. We can find out where everyone is."

"Awfully convenient," Jonah rumbled.

"She's right," Ivy said. "We shouldn't. It'd be the perfect place for-"

But when Justin crossed the threshold they gave up, and slowly filed in after him.

The room was dark, empty, and cluttered with manilla folders like the stack Ella kept from the lab. Wheeled chairs spun askew of a line of desks before the control panel. TV screens lined the wall above, each split into 4 live feeds.

"No one," Peter said, looking up. "No one's in the hallways...."

"That's impossible," Justin said. "We heard those two guards earlier. They should still be there."

Ivy stepped forward. "Those aren't all the hallways. We need to find out how to switch the feeds."

Everyone started shuffling around the room, mostly towards the panel, peering at its blinking lights. There was little sense to be made of the whole thing – buttons with cryptic labels like AW1 and IW4. Giving up, Justin backed away, taking in the whole of the room. He noticed a single computer monitor at one of the desks with a blinking orange light. Justin walked to this monitor and shook the mouse beside it.

An odd symbol came to life on the computer screen - a circle, made of smaller circles in different colors, where the smaller circles streaked toward the center, like fingerpaints smeared by a toddler's hand, every color combining to yield a murky brown asterik. Beside this symbol was the familiar seal of the CIA. A collection of folders with crytic names – "JML2" or "EAS6" – covered nearly the whole desktop.

Ella riffled through more folders on the floors, the desk. "The others," Ella said suddenly. "The folders that were missing. Artie's, and Justin's and Ivy's.... They're here." She offered him a folder, which he took disinterestedly. He'd see little in there to surprise him or anyone else, but he flipped idly to the first page anyway, if only to read his SCOPE scores.

But when he saw "Justin Michael Ledford," something else clicked in his mind.

JML.