Chapter 14

The grey autumn weather outside made leaving the facility over breaktime decidedly unappealing, which was the perfect pretext for Silicia to wander into the first floor med bay with an alibi drink in her hand. Two of the windows were cracked, letting in cool humid air and the sound of the intermittent rain, and the few nurses on rotation were crowded around a cleared lab table eating sandwiches.

"You're allowed to eat in here?" Silicia asked, entering with her most charming smile in place.

"As long as no one snitches," Jaqueline called, grinning, and got up to greet her.
"You wanna sit with us for a bit, love?"

Silicia let herself be led to the table and introduced, and sat in on inane conversation for a while sipping her watery coffee-machine tea. Her opening appeared when the conversation turned to the topic of the rain.

"Isn't the humidity bad for the machines?"

"Eh," said Mahdi eloquently, "Never been a problem before. They're fine with it as long as they aren't running."

"I suppose they designed the things with their future users in mind," Silicia teased, and mentally added a tally mark to her side of the board when the group of nurses around her laughed.

"So how do these babies actually work," she inquired as casually as she could muster.
"When I got my implant it was nothing like this."

"What's it to you?" one of the nurses asked sharply. She had not spoken a word so far, so Silicia had honestly forgotten she was there. Tally mark for Tump Inc..

"Neda!" Jaqueline chided, "there's no need for hostilities!"

"Hey, I'm just curious," Silicia defended herself mildly. Conveniently, the rest of the group jumped to her aid. The conversation quickly dissolved back into general chatter, but half an hour later when lunch time was about to end, Silicia still left the med bay satisfied with having gained a general understanding of its layout and staff. After all it had been a scoping mission, not a raid.

To her surprise, she ran into Anne in the lobby, who was fidgetting with the empty plastic sleeve of one of the mediocre wraps the cafeteria sold.

She greeted Silicia nervously, and the two of them embarked on the journey back up to the 8th floor together.

"I've been thinking," she said as Silicia was tipping her cup back to gulp down the last of her luke warm tea.
"My kid could really use me there, at the moment, and with my husband just having been promoted..."

Silicia realized with a start where this was going.

"Maybe I should take some time off to focus on family matters-"

"Are you quitting on me right now, Annemarie?" Silicia asked incredulously. Anne smiled awkwardly and urged her with nervous little hand gestures to please keep walking before people noticed.

"Is this going to be a problem?"

"No," Silicia rushed to assure her, "no, of course not. No. It's understandable, you-"

They stepped into the elevator, and Silicia bit her lip and fumbled a bit as she selected the 8th floor.

"I understand. It's a good choice."

"Thank you," Anne said quietly.

Silicia nodded at her, and they spent the ride up staring straight ahead not saying a word. It was one of the less awkward silences Silicia had had the opportunity to bask in recently.

---

She enjoyed a surprisingly nice weekend after the busy recent weeks - the fall was making one last effort before succumbing, and golden sunlight glinted off puddles and the windows of buildings. Being alone at the flat she took several walks to make use of the wonderful weather and found quickly that even the thin coat she'd brought was a bit too much.

Her fragile sense of peace shattered when she came into work the following Monday to find Fred waiting for her. This would have been normal, if not for the way that he positively radiated unease.
Her coworker looked like a man caving in on himself, worry painting his face ashen white, and she soon found out why.

As it turned out, the kids had mounted an escape attempt over the weekend, probably figuring they wouldn't get that warm a day again until spring. They'd really needed it to be warm, because when they'd been caught they were attempting to scale the banks down to the lake - if they'd made it down, they only would have had to make it a hundred meters or so to be invisible from the facility's grounds, and another 50 to be fished out of the port in the closeby town. But they hadn't gotten that far, because one of them had told.

Fred relayed all this to her in the safety of his office, though both of them felt far too restless to sit and attempt their usual façade of calmness. The undecorated white wall at her back was the only thing keeping Silicia upright as she slumped against it, feeling like her legs were about to give out under her as Fred talked.
When she came to sit ungracefully on the carpet after he'd finished, Fred stopped his pacing and joined her against the wall.

"Why are you still here, Freddy?", she asked, tipping her head back against the rough wallpaper.
Next to her, his bouncing leg stilled. While Fred thought it over, Silicia covered her face with her hands and concentrated on breathing in an even rythm. That plan could have gotten the kids killed, even if they hadn't gotten caught.

"I think my replacement would be worse," Fred finally said. Silicia nodded her understanding, because she felt exactly the same way.

---

With all but one of her charges locked up in their rooms, Silicia had gained time in her days that she used mostly to wander the emptiest hallways the facility had to offer like a ghost, thinking as little as possible. It made a nice if psychologically concerning counterweight to her periods of activity. Maybe Mira was punishing her by denying her work to distract herself with - if so, it was working.

She had all of two days to dread her next session with Cris, and when it came to pass she had settled on a course of action as childish as it was effective. She handed over the question sheet to him and sat there in silence until he'd finished filling it in. He caught on quickly, and a terrible superior smirk played around his mouth the entire time he was writing.
The time for professionalism had long since passed.

---

"Maybe we should unionize," Silicia said. In the gloom that had come over the 8th floor recently, employees tended to gather in silent somber bunches around the coffee machines and chairs in the lobby. As far as she could tell, others' patients were scared and disappearing too, though she wasn't brave enough to ask - they might answer her honestly, now.

Fred looked at her like he was trying to figure out her game. Silicia was pretty sure there was nothing left to figure out except how much the others could be trusted.

"Before they start testing mind reading on us," Naomi agreed, taking a fortifying swallow of his latte.

Samuel looked between them with an expression Silicia couldn't read at all, which scared her. He had always been quiet. If she were running Tump Inc., she'd have spies that reported directly to the top in every department and team. But then, a mole would likely make more of an effort to integrate himself than Samuel ever had.

Fortunately, he said right then: "While they still underestimate us," which won him Silicia's tentative confidence.

"Let's meet somewhere where there's fewer cameras, though," said Fred.

"A park or something?" Naomi suggested, but Silicia shook her head.
"Someplace it would be normal for a group of coworkers to meet. A bar, maybe?"

Fred nodded and punched in his third coffee order of the day.
"There's a nice irish pub on the corner of Linden street and Avery. This Saturday, everyone bring whoever they trust?"

They all agreed, and swiftly dispersed as naturally as they could each manage.

---

"Go away," Alec called through his prison door when she knocked, and again more angrily when she said his name. Instead of telling him she was glad he was alive - which was true - she moved on. It would do neither of them any good to keep bothering people who didn't want to talk.
Rin and Lia were much the same - only Tump seemed remotely willing to be checked in on.

Mostly, he seemed caught in his own spiral of despair, insisting to her that he could have made it - could have swum all the way and kept the others on course if not for...
Silicia bit her tongue. It didn't really matter enough to argue over. He would never get another chance unless she gave it to him, and it would not involve swimming to freedom.

---

Silicia had gone back and forth on whether or not to bring Anne to the pub with her that weekend, and in the end had decided not to. She was the only one of them who had her own children to think of, and deserved to not be put in any more danger of being targeted by the company.
What they were doing was plainly risky, but it seemed the facility staff had finally reached a point where inaction would be worse than taking that risk.

Instead of Anne, she had invited Lakerson, who in turn had insisted on bringing along his coworker Sarah Norman. They met outside the pub, trying and failing to interact casually, and entered together.

The group they were looking for was easy to make out, and much larger than Silicia had anticipated. Her arrival caused a stirr as seemingly the whole table got up to rearrange themselves into a more orderly gathering.
Silicia ended up in the very centre of the group, seated with Fred to her left and Lakerson to her right like a king and her advisors. It was embarrassing, which made her very glad when someone put a pint glass in her hand and she could drink instead of speak.

The meeting opened with a round of introductions - they'd gained members from nearly all departments the facility boasted - followed by people's justification for being there. It was a necessary precaution, but had her feeling a bit like she'd accidentally ended up leading a cult initiation ritual. The others kept glancing at her like they expected her to pass judgement.

Finally they got to the meat of the matter. Silicia set her pint down with enough force that the sound carried across the table. Her fingers were slick with condensation and the seam of her trousers kept itching against her ankle, but she put on her bravest face and recounted all that she had learned so far of the company's misdeeds.
She had to pause when she got to the chips' true capabilities to allow her audience time for their various expressions of fear. Lakerson spent the entire time staring resolutely down at the scratched up oak table - Silicia, too, worried that people would turn on him for his complicity, but no one did. She supposed at least they were all on the same page about being in the same boat.

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