CHAPTER 21

When you are stuck at home you do not realize how boring it gets just by the sheer thought that there is nowhere to go. I never really enjoyed being left alone to my thoughts without doing any activity to distract me. I was constantly in my head and to make matters worse I was worried that the executive may find DC or figure out something about the game. the pacing could not help me, trying to force myself to sleep was like torturing myself,, and doing anything other than worrying was impossible. My brain was hardwired to panic and panic alone in such a situation. it always started with panic took a lot of time to relax and if something else were to trigger me I would go back to panic. seven days already felt like seven months for me.

As I sat there thinking about the entire situation I took my phone and did the one thing that you are never supposed to do when trying to relax which was look at social media as if one magically post was going to change every bad thing that was happening in my life. Going on there felt like nothing and everything had happened, social media provided the most random of content being thrown at me, with animals doing weird things, people doing weird things, weird videos and pictures floating around everywhere. in short,, all I got was weird content which I got extremely sucked into. I have never felt so emotionless and yet felt like each second I had a different reaction. I wanted it to feel like I could to it for ages that I could look at weird videos the whole of the seven days and everything would work itself out.

After being sucked into my phone for so long I looked to the side and I could feel the tightness that was at my neck. it felt like I had broken something and my eyes were dry as hell. like literally dry, hot,, and tortured, four hours had successfully passed but the effects of mindlessly staring at my phone were just as bad as being locked in a chair and watching moving images. I knew that that was never going to be the solution to my problem and I just sat up and once again all my problems came into full focus.

distracting myself was clearly not going to be the answer since the problems would not end like that. I had to think about it carefully and find a way out of it. maybe I could try contacting Miranda somehow, but seeing all the cameras around me I knew that that would be an extra struggle. it was not as if I had anything to do since I was already bored to death and I had nothing better to do with my life. I could even come up with project plans for Gendwall if there was still hope for it. this was all me trying to find any possible way not to go mad for the entire time I was in there.

Just as I had got my whiteboard and pen ready I got a sudden call. I even forgot that phones could do that. I checked the caller ID and it said unknown caller which made me nervous about who was calling. It may have been a death threat for all I knew. I slowly answered the call.

"how you doing under house arrest," Miranda said in an oddly cheerful tone.

I would have expected her of all people to be depressed by the situation.

"I don't know what you mean," I said being careful since the Executive could be listening to us at any moment.

"ah don't worry I know what is going on. the call has been end-to-end encrypted so don't worry about what I say, I got a guy who pre-recorded some of the responses and is feeding them to The executive. Unfortunately,, I couldn't remotely hack the microphones placed in your place so you just have to pretend that you are in a call with your dear girlfriend."

"dear?"I said sarcastically

"I see you want to start acting sassy in your position right now."

"Fine I will drop it, how are you doing?"I said carefully choosing my words.

"if I can call you right now then everything is running smoothly."

"Really?"

"yeah,, everything is going according to plan?"

"Huh?" I asked confused with her statement.

we were definitely on two different pages when it came to the issue at hand. I thought she would tenser than me the way she is whenever the time is wasted. Now she was surprisingly relaxed and claiming that everything is going according to plan.

"Wait don't tell me you never got my e-mail."

"What?"

"from your responses, I guess you never got it. You really need to read your e-mails, Cy. I traded some information for even bigger information."

" don't tell me...."

"Your house arrest is because of me."

"You gotta be kidding me."

" you are the one who never read your email, even Glenn knows. it was too late for me to drive over to your place especially with your mother hovering around so I decided to send a cryptic e-mail.don't tell me you thought that something bad happened."

Miranda was the one who leaked the information about spying on Gendwall. Well, it made sense since it was only Glenn and her who had known about DC and the footages.

"Well don't worry we already set up a computer in your office so they will never find DC ever and X-floor, you will probably be interrogated many times but i know you can handle it."

At least I knew that things would work out eventually but I still had to act as if i was nervous of the situation. A sudden shift in after the call could make them suspicious.

"How did it happen?"I asked.

"well it was a guy who knows a guy who knows a another guy who knows Jay type of situation. Apparently your babysitter was suspecting you were hiding something even after all the times you said it is fine she never believed you. So she decided to take a different route of getting the juicy details. i got one of the guys to claim that he has information on you after Jen accidently had a drunken night and spilled some secrets to the bartender, something like ' Oh my boyfriend is always staring at his computer and not giving me the attention I deserve.He's always...'Obviously the bartender just gave the small details and said that it looked like you were constantly staring at videos of civil wars and all. She connected the dots and got you under house arrest. In turn the bartender wanted to know about XR. Turns out he is a wanted man, and she gave us all their previous leads on the guy and we have a list we can go through.Cutting our work into half. Plus now that we have made sure that they are constantly watching you they will stop suspecting you of doing anything. BOOM! killing two birds with one stone."

"What about the previous dinner date plans we made?"

"oh the contest , we will still leave it there, just in case their lead are not accurate, Now don't worry your little self as i said everything is going according to plan. i know you will be fine in your ultra large mansion. now let me research on these leads so by the time you come back we can try contacting each oneof them. Oh and Glenn said hi.....and he got his boxes of treats from Nishon or whatever things you two weirdos order for yourselves."

She hang up on me after dumping so much information on my lap. I could not imagine how it would feel for someone to be told tons of information about something that they never knew existed all at once and try to process it as time continued to move. It must be super annoying and mind-numbing.I just could not imagine.

It was like being given so much good news that you do not process it as good but just surprising like it honestly a lot of wheels turning to reach that dumb house arrest. It did calm my nerves at a large amount.If I knew sooner it would have made things much easier. But all i had to do is survive with my thoughts for a week , I could definitely do that.

Yeah,that was just a visual of severely lying to myself.