Chapter 609: Retribution

When Mina opened her eyes, she was surprised to see President Lee and Zane still working on whatever it was they were working on. She was mentally exhausted, but she was too afraid to go to her room. She feared that if she were to leave, some new piece of information would make itself known, and she would once again find herself on the bad side of President Lee, who, while still angry, no longer looked at her as if she had betrayed him. She could not understand it herself, but she did not want him to look at her that way ever again.

"Mina, go get some sleep," Zane said. After Doctor Harris' outburst about retribution, the woman had gone into a panic, and it took him and Ian a full half hour to convince her that she was not the catalyst to what had happened. It was a lie; she had been the reason Ian had beaten the poor doctor to within an inch of his life, but she did not need to know that.

"I'm scared," Mina admitted, no longer seeing a reason to hide how she felt. "I want to be able to defend myself if something else comes up." Ian frowned at the sentence and sent a text to someone. A few seconds later Mina got a call from Mills, and while Ian could not hear, he could tell whatever the woman was saying was working, because she had prepared to stand.

When Mina left his study, Ian cast a glance at Zane, who plopped himself down in the seat that Mina had just vacated, shutting his eyes tightly as he massaged the bridge of his nose. Ian knew the man was feeling awful for what happened, and even more terrible for how he had spoken to Mina when he still believed that his father was involved. It had turned out that Mr. Walsh's man was available for hire by anyone.

Doctor Harris, wanting to make sure nothing traced back to him, had paid the man to procure Mina after having made her think her life was on the line. He was truly a foul man who did not think of Mina as a person at all. She was little more than a research subject to the doctor, and because Terrence was able to hack into the man's computer without corrupting the data, Drax was able to find hard evidence against him. Jeremy's notes on Mina were accessible to anyone who had the appropriate clearance and Doctor Harris had painstakingly produced a plan geared toward convincing Mina that he had helped her escape Zane's father, and she would only be safe with him.

The doctor had even gone as far as to detail future attempts on Mina's life meant to keep her in a state of panic. It was almost a sort of conditioning program that the man had created, not dissimilar to the torture training that Ian and many of the Lee soldiers who worked directly with the family had gone through. The only difference was that Doctor Harris did not want to harden Mina, he wanted to break her in a way that made her believe he was not just the safest option, but the best as well.

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Emma awoke to knocking at the front door. She shifted out of bed, and both Jay and Olivia were standing in the hall looking at one another in concern. Dom had not come back to the apartment, Mills was not around, and they had already experienced a scare around the time that Mina had been shot. They had been told that someone switched out a prop gun and had never been caught, but all three women had, on several occasions, discussed how ridiculous and far-fetched that was. They knew that their friend was in some sort of trouble, and they had all guessed that it had something to do with her employment with the Lee family.

Emma grabbed her bat and approached the door cautiously. They no longer had a security camera at the door because a man named Terrence was able to hack into the feed, and Dom tore the system out saying that it was a risk to all of them.

"Where is Cylus?" Olivia asked. Her cousin had promised to stay until Dom returned, but he was either in too deep of a sleep on the couch or gone. All three women got their answer when they spotted the man passed out drunk on the floor. The bottles around him told them that he had gotten into Willow's stash, and obviously had one too many. Ignoring the drunk man, Emma put on a brave voice.

"Who is there?" She called out forcefully. Mills had told them all never to sound or look frightened even if they were. She told them that keeping a calm mind made thinking fast easier. Emma and Jay were the closest to the door, they insisted that Olivia stay behind them, since she was the most fragile of the group.

"Emma, it's me James. I have a key, but I did not want to just walk in without you ladies expecting me." Olivia dashed into her bedroom to cover up, while Jay started to kick at her drunken boss, who barely stirred. Emma watched the door, waiting to see if it were really James who walked into the apartment and not someone who sounded like him. As soon as she saw the man her heart sped up; he looked older, but in a good way. He was much more rugged, and his build was almost as broad as Dom's. "Sorry to wake you. Commander Staton told me that you liked to swing bats around, and I did not want to get hit." Emma could not even form a sentence. She had gotten much better with holding conversations, but talking was the very last thing on her mind looking at the man in front of her.

"Is Mina okay?" Jay asked from behind her sister who had become a statue.

"She is physically uninjured, but you know how she is. Who is that?" James asked, pointing to the man face down on the ground. He had been told that only four women would be in the home and even after Jay told him that it was Olivia's cousin, he still checked in with his superiors to make sure the man was cleared to remain in the apartment.

Emma was still staring at James, and her sister had to elbow her to get her to close her mouth. She mimed the word 'stop' to her sister, who made an annoyed face before returning her eyes to James, who had physically lifted CEO Rue into a sitting position while Olivia tried to get the man to drink water. She did not even remember when the woman had returned to the sitting room, and that was an indication to even herself that she had been staring at James too hard.

Jay nudged her again, and this time she mouthed 'keep it in your pants,' making Emma go red in embarrassment. Almost all the women who lived in the apartment, including Dom, knew what had happened between herself and James. They knew how fast she and James moved, and they knew how quickly the relationship fizzled out. It was still a sore topic for Emma, who felt as though James was playing her, but as she stared at the man, she wondered if it was worth being played.

"Emma, can I talk to you for a minute," Jay said, and Emma nodded before following her sister into her bedroom. "No," her sister said flatly. "He had his shot, and he blew it." Emma was shocked by Jay's rebuke, and she felt herself become angry. She was just looking, unlike Jay, who she knew had gone way, way further with Director Porter.

"I was just looking, and I do not like the tone you are using with me. I have no intention of doing anything." 'At the moment,' Emma thought.

"So, you mean to tell me that if he walks into your bedroom right now, you would not be the least bit interested?" Emma's face turned red, and she looked down. Not from shame, but because she had started to visualize her sister's words in very graphic detail. "Eww, you are thinking about it." Emma stifled a laugh. She had never grossed her sister out, and she found it fitting that the woman experience how she felt after every story she had ever heard start with 'his lips did this' and 'his hand did that.'

"I just was not expecting him to look so… manly," Emma replied, staring at the shut door as if she could see James through it.

"I think you've been hanging out with Dom a little too much," Jay said exaggeratedly.

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Mina laid awake in bed, unable to sleep. Mills had asked her to get rest because Drax had questions for her, but rest was far from on her mind. She felt guilty, she felt helpless, and because Miss Ruby was not waking up, she felt like a murderer. Mina believed that if she had not snuck into President Lee's hotel room, then she would not have met the man, she would not have ever been to the Lee facility, she would not have had her IQ confirmed, and she would not have been put on the radar of Doctor Harris.

Dom could not even return to the apartment because President Lee had the man working with Terrence, and they were in the process of doing a full sweep of all the men who had shown interest in Mina, no matter how small. The men who she raced, the magnet man, and even Doctor Witt had been flagged as potentially hostile, and Mina's heart ached with the knowledge that she had once again dragged people down by her actions.

"Are you still awake?" Mills asked, and Mina turned to see that the woman had entered her room. She did not even hear the door open which told her that she was too deep into her own mind and needed to get out of it.

"I keep thinking of all the things I could have done differently," Mina admitted as Mills curled beside her in the bed.

"Is that helping any?" Mina shook her head because it was not helping, it was making her feel worse. "Then can you stop doing it?"

"I don't think so."

"I used to feel that way after I dropped out of school," Mills admitted, and Mina turned to face the woman, who was staring at her with equally tired looking eyes. "I found a hobby." Mills lifted her wrist to flash her bracelet that Mina knew was really a strangle cord.

"For me, it's numbers," Mina said. "She stood up and brought one of her notebooks to Mills who flipped through the pages with a look of bewilderment on her face that made Mina giggle. "It's a mathematical formula in rocket science with a high margin of error." Mills looked confused and Mina just smiled. She remembered when Sadie used to look at her the same way, so she used to show her instead.

Mina stood up and came back with an empty notebook and started jotting down the equation while explaining it to Mills. She went into detail about each symbol, what it meant, what the margin of error was, and how it directly affected the way the science was taught. Mina found herself toying with the formula because she knew she could improve it. She kept working and talking until she heard faint snores coming from Mills, who she realized must have been working with Drax before she came to the Lee mansion to check on her. She knew that Mills had called because she had been ordered to call. She had seen President Lee text Mills and she wondered what that meant.