Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 69: Everything, Their Everything or Our Everything.

Trigger warning for violence.

—

When Joshua steps into the interrogation room and doesn't find Seth waiting for him, his hope drops out from under him. He comes up short in the doorway, backing into Marlowe behind him. He's confused, but part of him knows exactly what this means.

Something's gone wrong.

The room looks just as he remembers it, except this time all the hospitable touches from before are starkly absent. Waiting for him when he arrives is dark-skinned, dark-haired man around Bennett's age. Joshua stares at him, feeling all at once cornered. From behind, Marlowe peers up at him and prods him forward with their fingertips.

Reluctantly, almost mechanically, Joshua steps across the threshold, and Marlowe follows close behind.

The man isn't wearing a lab coat, oddly enough, though the badge at his breast pocket looks just like Bennett's. His grey coveralls and military-grade boots certainly say he works here.

He's sitting on the edge of the table with a tablet in hand, scrolling through when Joshua and Marlowe come into the room. At their entrance, he looks up and smiles.

On the other side of the dark, one-way glass, Bennett is directing a scientific hullabaloo. He's parading around the room, his visible excitement buzzing through him at a molecular level.

He stops now in front of Seth. Around them is a structure that is far too much like a cage for Seth's liking. It's situated in the center of the room, set up against the far wall across from the dark one-way window.

Seth put up a vigorous struggle when he had first seen it—he's been through enough today without adding a cage to the mix. Screw that.

There was nowhere for him to go, though. The scientists shut and locked the door to the room as soon as he stepped inside. It took Bennett and all three of the colleagues he has here to help him to shove Seth into the wrought cell. They'd taken his shirt in the process, and he stands now against the wall with bitter resignation and resentment, his arms held above his head by the cuffs at his wrists.

Reaching above him, Bennett tests the metal cuffs now, and when they hold, he grins.

"This containment piece was built just for you, did you know?" He gestures around them with enthusiasm, and sounds genuine when he asks, "Isn't that so cool?"

Seth lifts his head to give Bennett a withering look. "No, no it's not."

Bennett's grin shutters, but he bolsters it the next moment. He seems to be holding on to his chipper mood by sheer force of will.

Behind Bennett, a clattering sound cuts through the tense staredown between father and alien, and Bennett whips around. One of his colleagues—assistants?—is fumbling with a piece of machinery and has just barely managed to not drop it.

"Hey! We're not paying you to break things! Be more careful, will you?" Bennett leans against the bars of the enclosure with a frown, digging his fingers into the metal grating.

"Y-yes, sir!" The young man flusters, quickly ducking his head and rushing to where he's supposed to put the medical-looking monitor.

Seth wonders dully if these are interns. He supposes, based on what he knows of how humans and jobs work, that if this is a top-secret base, it would be easier to hire young people right out of college. They're new to the workforce and would be easier to make disappear than more seasoned workers. They'd also have less credibility if they try to talk about working here later on. That is, if they even remember working here.