“Fuck, I want to shut so many of these damn settlements down. It’s obvious that some of them have been left to govern for too long without interference. I’ll raise the issue with the higher ups.”
“You mean your relatives?” Killian deadpanned.
Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Yes. Now keep digging. I want to be able to hand Seri as much information as I can when we tell him.”
Seri did his best to ignore Severo and keep reading. The man was lying there on his side, head resting on his arm, just staring at him. There was this dopey smile on the Dweller’s face, that for some reason made Seri’s insides flutter.
“Stop.” Seri giggled, not looking away from the page floating in front of his face.
“Stop, what?” Severo mused.
“Staring, you dork. I’m trying to read.”
The Dweller chuckled. “But I like looking at you.”
He went to say something, but stopped when a phone started to ring.
The man sighed.
“Leave it,” Seri said. “It’s late.”
“Oh, how I want to listen, but I need to check who it is first. Between all the lawsuits going on, lawyers constantly calling me, the realtor, and my mother driving me insane after deciding they were moving back to Earth, and to this area…” Severo trailed off.
“Yes, yes, check who it is.” Seri waved his hand.
The Dweller rolled over and snagged his phone off the nightstand, before rolling back to face him. The man frowned at the screen on releasing it. “It’s Cyrus…”
“This late? On a Saturday?”
“Yeah, I think I better answer,” the Dweller groaned.
“Answer,” he huffed. Seri collapsed the hologram and set his tablet aside on the bed.
He had no hope of reading with someone talking nearby.
Severo connected the call, holding it to his ear. “Something up?” The man frowned at whatever Cyrus said.
Seri’s brow rose in question when the Dweller set the phone between them and put it on speaker.
“Seri, can you hear me?” Cyrus asked.
“Yes?”
“First, let me explain a little about what we have been up to…though, I will say, it may piss you off,” Cyrus started, and when he continued, Seri had to say that, yes…he was pissed off.
“You did WHAT?!” Seri glared at Severo and sat up.
The Dweller grimaced. “I know you didn’t want us to dig… It’s just…it is our job to dig into these types of things. And to be clear, I’ve stayed out of it…”
“Oh great, so someone else was digging into my past. Severo, I honestly don’t know what to think right now. You went against my wishes, and then pretended you hadn’t. And never brought it up again. Because, let’s be clear, you knew they were digging, right?”
Severo sighed. “I knew. And I didn’t say anything against it… I just…had this feeling there was more to it all. And there was, it seems.” He quickly added, “I know it wasn’t right. I should have said something after we’d talked about it that first time. But you got so upset…I just…”
“You two need to figure this out later. Seri’s mother is coming here. We are still researching, but as far as we can tell, she wasn’t involved in your abduction,” Cyrus said before clarifying, “The original one.”
“Oh, how lucky am I to have multiple fucking abductions on my record that we need to clarify which we’re referring to,” Seri said sarcastically.
“That all being said…whether you want to meet her or not, is up to you.”
