Free Web NovelChapter 68: The Treadmill, Mara’s Message, And Blood In The Corner!
Oren stepped in front of the three guards before Harolin reached them.
He smoothly slid between them that even Harolin was expecting him. He just stood there in their path and looked at them.
"Don’t you have somewhere to be than to gossip?" Oren said.
They looked at him, almost telling him to mind his business. Then they looked past him and saw the weight plate in Harolin’s hand, and the cold look and murderous intent on his face. Something in all three of their faces arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.
"Sorry for the disturbance," the first one said.
"I have something important to do..." The other one added
They left quickly, closing the door behind them immediately.
Oren exhaled deeply and turned around.
Harolin was standing with the 25kg plate in one hand looking at the door they had just walked through. He wanted to go after them and bash their head. Even if it’s just one of them. There was no way he could forgive them for talking about Ruaan.
"What exactly," Oren said, "were you planning to do with that?"
Harolin looked away from the door and glared at Oren. The one who had ruined his plan.
"They were talking about Ruaan," Harolin said.
"I heard what they were talking about. What were you going to do with the plate?"
Harolin set it down on the nearest rack. "Nothing."
Oren looked at him.
"They were talking shit about my Ruaan," Harolin said. Like that, it explained everything completely. Which, for Harolin, it did.
Oren exhaled and tapped his shoulder once. "Everyone in this facility has eyes for him. That’s not going to change. The best thing you can do is keep him close and keep him safe." He stepped back. "Not put three guards in the infirmary."
He walked toward the treadmills.
Harolin watched him.
"Everyone," Harolin said. "Including you."
Oren opened his water bottle. He drank from it. He set it down on the machine shelf and looked at Harolin without embarrassment.
"Yes," he said simply.
Harolin looked at him for a long moment.
He got on the treadmill beside him.
They ran in silence for a moment. The only sound in the gym was the two machines and the distant noise of the facility outside.
"I need to remind you," Harolin said. "He’s mine."
"Everyone knows he’s yours," Oren said.
"I’m saying it to you specifically."
"I heard you the first time and the second time and I’ll hear you the third time when it comes." Oren increased his pace slightly. "Doesn’t stop me from having eyes."
Harolin looked at him.
"You walked into this facility a few days ago," Harolin said. "And the first thing you did was recite the code of conduct about officer and prisoner relationships. Verbatim."
"I remember."
"Look at you now."
Oren said nothing.
"And look at me," Harolin said. "I came here to make someone’s life miserable and ended up—" he stopped.
"In love with him," Oren said.
Harolin’s jaw moved.
"How do you know that?" Harolin said.
"Seo," Oren said.
Harolin’s hands tightened on the treadmill handles. "That bastard. What else does he know? What has he said?" He kept pace, but his voice tightened with the effort of managing the situation. "Does he know about Mara? Does he know why I came here?"
"He knows enough," Oren said carefully. "He’s the director’s son, Harolin. He has access to information that most people in this building don’t."
Harolin looked at him. "Are you supposed to be telling me this?"
"I’m telling you because I want Ruaan to be safe," Oren said. "And whatever Seo is building in his head, it involves Ruaan at the centre of it. Someone should know the full picture."
Harolin got off the treadmill.
Oren watched him reach for his towel and wipe his face and pull his uniform back on with the efficient movements of someone who had made a decision and was already acting on it.
"Are you going to confront Seo?" Oren said.
"I have no business with Seo," Harolin said. He put his cap on. "And a warning. Stay away from Ruaan."
He walked out. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
Oren watched the door close and increased his pace on the treadmill.
’Stay away from Ruaan,’ he thought.
He tilted his head slightly.
’I wonder if that’s actually possible.’
.
.
Harolin was halfway to Ruaan’s room when his phone vibrated.
He almost put it back without looking. Phones were technically not permitted in the main facility areas. It could get missing or stolen by the prisoners. He carried his anyway because there were people who needed to reach him and the facility rules did not fully apply to a private general in the way they applied to everyone else.
He looked at the screen.
There was a message from Mara.
He stopped walking and opened the message.
Mara: I want to visit. When can I come?
He read the message and raised a brow. He typed back immediately.
Harolin: Don’t come here. It’s a men’s facility.
He wanted to put his phone back into his pocket but her response came fast.
Mara: You’re my brother. What am I afraid of?
He exhaled through his nose. He knew how stubborn Mara was. There was no way she was going to give up if she wanted something so he kept walking while he typed.
Harolin: Tell me in advance when you’re planning to come. I’ll arrange it properly.
Mara: Sure. I’ll bring snacks. For you and for Ruaan.
Harolin stopped walking again when he saw Ruaan’s name. He looked at the message.
Harolin: Why are you bringing anything for Ruaan? What do you know about him?
Mara: I have my ways to know things. He sounds exactly your type. Finally.
"She’s definitely up to no good," He said and put the phone back in his pocket and walked faster because standing in corridors having feelings about things was not how he operated.
He turned the corner at the east end of the building.
And stopped.
The smell reached him before anything else. Copper and something underneath it that his body recognised before his mind did, the specific combination that eleven years of active service had made impossible to misidentify.
Blood.
He moved.
The corner opened into a narrow side corridor that connected two of the older cell blocks. Rarely used. No cameras at the far end, he knew this because he had done a full security review of the building in his first week.
A body.
Blue uniform. Face down, partially against the wall. The body was still twitching slightly, which was worse than still because it meant it had just happened.
Harolin was already on his phone calling it in before he reached the body. He kept his voice level and gave the location and told them to move fast as he crouched down and checked for a pulse and found something faint and fading.
He kept pressure where it needed to be and waited.
Oren arrived first. Then two other officers. Then the facility medics, moving fast through the corridor with their equipment.
They worked for eight minutes.
Harolin stood back and let them work and watched and kept his face doing nothing.
At the end of eight minutes, one of the medics looked up.
The twitching had stopped.
Harolin stood in the corridor and looked at the body. He started thinking about the body, wondering why this was done in a location with no cameras, why a blue uniform, on a Tuesday, when he wasn’t even part of the bottom ten or grey uniform was here.
Oren appeared beside him and held out a tablet. freewebnovёl.ƈom
CCTV footage from the nearest camera covering the corridor entrance.
Harolin watched it.
A group of men in grey uniforms moved together like they had planned it for a long time. They walked a single dark blue uniform into the corner. The footage was cut at the edge of the camera’s range.
Two minutes and forty seconds later.
The grey uniforms walked back out. But the dark blue uniform did not.
"This is murder," Oren said quietly. He looked at Harolin. "What is happening in this facility?"
Harolin looked at the still frame of the grey uniforms on the screen.
At the coordinated way they moved. At the total absence of hesitation in any of them.
"Something that’s been building," Harolin said. "For longer than two weeks."
He handed the tablet back and looked at the corridor. He stared at the body and also, the wall that had a crack stained with blood. Not just the wall, but also the floor.
He thought about the recreation centre announcement and the revised meals and the two-week games and all the things he had arranged to make this place better for one specific person.
And then he looked at what was in front of him. This wasn’t going the way he wanted.
"Lock down this section," he said. "Nobody moves until I say so."
