dot.

50: Ownership

  "Bastard." Digorn clamped his hand down on his phone, so angry he was shaking. He swung his arm back and threw it across the room, delighting in how the glass shattered as shards of it fell down and into the carpet when the device hit the opposite wall.

  He chewed on his lip as he stared down at it, deciding after only a few short moments to pick it up again and check if it was broken. Luckily, it was alright except for the cracked screen. It would have been unfortunate to fully break it in a moment of anger- and inconvenient to replace. Not that he didn't have the money, of course. There were merely some files and information stored on it that would be very difficult to replicate or restore.

  After being woken up by the sounds of a nearby car backfiring from outside, Digorn had chosen to go and check on Nimue and the others. When he couldn't find the woman he was looking for he was concerned; but the later discovery that those he had imprisoned were also gone left him too furious for words.

  Pulling down on the sleeves of his pyjamas, he strode his way over to Crita's room, turning on all the lights as he went. Each heavy, impatient step resonated through the echo-filled halls, firing back at him as amplifications of his own frustration.

  "Get up." He reached his assistant and flicked on the glaring light, making her squint her eyes as she was awoken in the middle of the night by the rudest boss she'd ever had the displeasure of working for.

  "What do you want?" She asked, not overly happy about the sudden disturbance to her sleep.

  "Don't use that tone with me. They've escaped."

  "Nimue and Dot?"

  "Who else? Use your brain, woman." As his anger increased, so did the frequency of derogatory statements spilling from his lips.

  "Sorry sir." Better to apologise, she thought, than to find myself fired.

  "They've gone to that man's house. Felix, I think his name was."

  "Right."

  "What's his address?"

  "I don't know sir."

  He grabbed her hair and fully dragged her out of bed, fuming with anger as his face reddened. "Well you bloody well ought to go and find out then!" He shouted, and threw her forwards with such force that she was only barely able to remain upright.

  Crita speedwalked down to Nimue's office, hoping for the sake of her own safety that the information she needed would be in the computer. Fortunately the scientist was known for being quite forgetful, so with any luck she'd be able to find the password to her computer- which would almost certainly contain any information about Felix that she could possibly need- written down somewhere in the office.

  She burst in through the door and looked around with the haste of someone in utter desperation- which, of course, wasn't too far off of the truth. The woman sat down by the computer after scanning the whole room for any scrap of paper or post-it note that could have the password written down on them and finding one, clicking on the screen as it lit up a bright blue and quickly entering the password to reveal an unlocked screen.

  Huh. That's convenient.

  Deciding not to ponder on the joyful coincidence, she moved her fingers with speed as she searched the computer for any mention of Felix Chesley.

  Immediately there were results- the most promising of which being a neat document with an underlined title of the man's name. Just as she clicked on it, Digorn walked in behind her, still dressed in his pyjamas and biting on his thumbnail.

  "Did you find anything?"

  "Here." Crita dragged her mouse across the petite black text underlining his address, the speed and lack of hesitation of the movement making her boss smile. Though he did get angry with her sometimes, she truly was a wonderful assistant.

  "What are we waiting for then? Get dressed, and come with me. Bring tranquilizers- and a gun, if you can find one."

  "Yes, sir."

...

  "We're keeping him."

  "But he's my son, you have no right to get custody!"

  "Custody? You think how he's been living is a good example of why you should be allowed to take him and not us?"

  "You little-"

  The small group at Felix's house had been arguing over what should happen next for a long time now: at one point the bickering had gotten so heated that Dot felt the need to jump inbetween Felix and Nimue to prevent them exchanging blows. This was still where he sat now, a pathetic excuse for a peacekeeper as his mother and the man he considered his father continued their fiery debate.

  "Whoever takes him needs to be able to skip the country. And no offence, but we have access to most of your financial details, and if I'm honest you won't be able to afford that." Tiro stood just behind Nimue, fiddling with his hair in a rather timid fashion as his girlfriend had one hand on Dot's head, using the other to point wild gestures towards Felix as she spoke.

  "Why would we have to skip the country? If we told the authorities it would all be sorted out anyway." Leander, who seemed to have inherited his mother's more gentle and trusting nature, put all his faith on telling the police or the government in hopes that it would fix everything.

  "Do you want  Dot to live in a tiny box? Digorn has relations within the government- it's more corrupt than you think. If we let them hear a single word about the success of this experiment, they won't take it lightly. He'll be taken away, and then none of us will get to keep him."

  "Keep him." In her private mumbles to herself which no one else could hear, Nsia was greatly troubled by the language they were using to describe the boy that was so desperately trying to keep everyone from breaking out in a full-blown brawl.

  The argument was all about who got to 'keep him'. Who got to own him, she thought. Wasn't that exactly what they were trying to stop here? Wasn't that the reason they had escaped, the reason they had come here, the reason Dot had held out for so long in the lab? Just for the chance to not be owned any longer?

  It was all about freedom. But now, Nsia was seeing even Felix- a kindly man the boy trusted with his life, and more- treat him like an object, a pet, something that had to be owned.

  She had no idea how he was putting up with it.

  "Dot," the mother spoke out, momentarily quieting the quarrel as she handed the bat-hybrid his neon card. "Who do you want to stay with?"