Ella walked back to the east side of the base, where her new ho was located. She felt very lucky to have bought the house when they did because word on the street was that the prices quickly increased.
"Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! I'm back!" she announced, walking inside.
"Hey, how did it go? Learn anything interesting from the announcents?" asked her mother.
Ella nodded. "Yeah, there were a number of good things, like new jobs, a new market, and a new building being built."
"Oh, new jobs? Hopefully, there is sothing I can do. I feel useless sitting here all day doing nothing," her mom said.
Reginald walked into the living room from his bedroom to join the conversation. "Leave the work to , honey. I'll find you a fun activity to do so that you won't be bored," he chid in dotingly.
He then turned to Ella. "Tell a bit more about these jobs, specifically the off-base scavenging ones."
Ella proceeded to tell him everything she had heard at the announcent.
"Good, tomorrow I'll go to the sign-up and ask for more details. I want to go out and find a few things for our ho. These fold-out chairs we brought from ho don't suit my old body," he said while rubbing the back of his aching shoulder.
"Dad, let go with you," said Ella. She didn't want her father to go out alone, feeling that these scavenging missions could still be very dangerous.
Reginald shook his head. "No, I want you to stay here with your mother. Go and sort through the items we brought and make a pile of non-essentials that we can sell to the market for points." The whole point of bringing his family here was to keep them safe, and he wasn't about to make them go out and put themselves in danger.
Ella frowned but knew that there was nothing she could say to change his mind.
----
As Rayne and Julian made their way back to their unit, they ran into Rico, who was hanging out in front of his entrance.
"Oh hey there, neighbors! Anything interesting at the announcent today?" he greeted, doing his best to appear genuine and friendly.
"Hi. Yeah, a lot of good stuff," answered Julian casually. He didn't want to engage in a lengthy conversation with him and continued to walk forward.
Rico noticed their cold attitude and frowned. It seed that buttering up his neighbors wouldn't be as easy as he had hoped.
"Hey, I didn't catch your nas," he called out to Rayne and Julian as they were about to step inside their house.
Rayne pretended not to hear him and walked inside, while Julian turned to look at him with a cold stare before following Rayne in.
"Tsk," Rico turned to head back inside. Their cold attitude pissed him off. "We'll see who gets the last laugh," he muttered as he entered his room.
After Rayne walked inside, she quickly pulled up her system panel and took out one of every kind of security cara she had stored.
Julian walked over to see a small pile of security caras and knelt down to look through them.
"I agree, setting this up will be a good safety asure. Our neighbors seem a little too friendly, and my gut is telling sothing is up," said Julian.
Rayne nodded. "Yes, I also feel that they've been too friendly. If it was before, I wouldn't think anything of it, but now it's rare to have people show such enthusiasm."
Julian picked out a tiny pinhole cara that could be installed very discreetly. It was also battery-powered, so they didn't need to worry about cable managent or connecting it to a power source.
"I'll go put this one up outside. I'll be right back," he said as he walked toward the door.
"Okay, while you do that, I'll set up a small monitor so that we can have the cara feed displayed indoors," said Rayne. She pulled out a small tablet that had Bluetooth capabilities and began the process of pairing the cara to the tablet.
By the ti Julian ca back, Rayne had already paired everything and had a clear feed from the cara outside.
"Great, it looks like it's all set up. You picked a good spot; you can see a lot from this angle," said Rayne as she looked at the cara feed.
Julian walked over and took a look, making sure there were no blind spots. "Okay, yeah, it looks good. We'll just have to monitor the battery life every once in a while."
Rayne cleaned up the rest of the caras and walked over to have a seat on the living room sofa. She patted the seat next to her, inviting Julian to sit down beside her.
"Co, tell what it was you wanted to inform about," she said, smiling.
Julian walked over and took a seat, turning to face her. "Let's see... For a few years now, I've been at war with soone I used to call a good friend, Damien. He now leads a large underground organization, doing many vile things through his lackeys."
He adjusted his posture, then continued, "Damien and I have been at a standstill for the last few years. Just as I was about to get the upper hand, he disappeared into hiding, and no matter how many n I sent and how much information I gathered, I was not able to find him."
Rayne placed her hand on his knee. She could feel the deep hurt and resentnt in his words, even though he didn't touch on the specifics of what exactly shattered their friendship. Although she was curious, she knew that he would explain more over ti.
"In order to get him out of hiding, I devised a plan to fake my own death. If Damien believed that I had died, he would finally drop his guard enough for my n to find him... but before any of that happened, these natural disasters occurred," sighed Julian.
"So even now, Damien and his n are out there sowhere?" asked Rayne, trying to grasp the situation.
"With his ability, I wouldn't be surprised if his n were already stationed here in this very base," said Julian.
"What? You really think so?" asked Rayne with wide eyes. She imagined Damien's n would be more organized, like a military regint.
Julian nodded. "Yeah, I'm almost positive. Which is why I wanted to bring it to light. I am currently Damien's number one enemy, and the only one who stands in his way. I just hope that Ian and Noah hear sothing soon."
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