Chapter 34

"Right, I almost forgot that you were coming here later," Jackson said. He led her outside to the living room where Wayne was working while Hans stayed inside the bedroom.

'And didn't realize that I was right next to him for almost an entire minute,' Jean thought. She really didn't understand video games. Furthermore, weren't things like that banned? Why did so many people have them? Jean asked Jackson about this. "Aren't they forbidden?"

"What is? That thing I was playing? Yeah, they are here in Blue Zone, but not outside. Don't really know why?"

"Then why are there so many people who have these?"

"Hm? Do you know people who also play video games here? That's interesting. Can you tell me their names, I might know them."

Names? It was only Zack and him she knew that played it. But then why did she say that? Maybe it was because that was all that Zack talked about most of the time. "Huh, it's only one person. What's his or her name still? I might know them."

"It's Zack."

"Zack? Zack, Zack, Zack... Is his father a scrapper?"

"Yes, you know him?"

"I do."

That was very surprising. Who would have guessed that he and Zack knew each other? Well, the two of them reminded Jean a lot of each other since they had the same tired-lifeless look on their faces and also had a similar way of talking.

"Actually, I don't know Zack like in I met him before. But I do know his father," Jackson clarified. "He always talked about him all the time since according to him, I remind him a lot of his son. And speaking of which, am I really that much like him?"

"Yes," Jean answered almost instantly without any hesitation whatsoever.

"Wow, that's interesting," Jackson scratched his chin. "Now I really want to meet the guy. I wonder just how much we have in common..."

While Jackson was lost in his train of thoughts for the moment, Jean looked around the room and saw that it was almost exactly like how it was the other day. The spilled coffee on the couch was still there and had dried up. The table was still a mess and the only difference was that there was someone else here this time.

Sitting on the dirty floor with his back against the wall was Wayne. He was trying his best to concentrate and Jean wasn't sure if they should be here talking when he was working on something.

"Uh... Aren't we disturbing him?" Jean asked Jackson while pointing at Wayne who was trying to fix the broken machine.

"Don't mind me. Just do your thing and I do mine. I like listening to people talk while I work anyway," Wayne told her. He didn't mind them being here and being loud while he was doing his work.

"Oh, okay."

She personally cannot work when there was noise. It was a little shocking to her to hear how he is able to work like that. As if he can read minds, Wayne explained to her that, "It's not so bad when you get used to it. If you're doing something you're good at or have a lot of experience doing, you don't really need to pay attention to it. Instead, you want to try to find something else to distract you while your hands just do the work automatically for you."

"What do you mean?"

"What I'm trying to say is that I work with machines my entire life and I can fix this with my eyes closed. It's boring to sit here fixing the thing silently and having something else to do like talking to people makes it faster."

"Oh." So that was what he meant.

"Wait, you can fix that with your eyes closed? Show it to us!" Jackson suddenly butted in after hearing what he said he can do.

"Of course not you idiot, I can't fix this with my eyes closed. I didn't mean that literally. It was just a saying. I work with machines for such a long time that my hands just instinctively move around and fix them. I don't need to pay much attention to it."

"Awww... That's a shame. I would really have liked to see that."

*Sigh* "Anyway..." Wayne looked at Jean and asked, "What are you doing here anyway. You told me that you two were just neighbors and I can see that there's more to the story than just that."

"We went to the same school together," Jackson told him.

"Yes, I know that you. It hasn't even been five minutes since you told me that," he reminded him.

"Oh right. Uh..." Jackson tried to think of the best way to describe their relationship with each other. "Friends?"

Jean raised an eyebrow at what he chose. She would say they less like friends and more like acquaintances, but different people have different definitions of the two. There were some people who would call people they only just knew and nothing more friends while there were others who would call people they've known fairly well and for a long time acquaintances. It really just depended on the person and how they felt.

"It took you a while to answer," Wayne noted. "Is that really what you two are?" But he didn't ask this question to Jackson. He was asking this to Jean.

"Umm... sure?" They've known each other long enough that they might as well be considered friends. It didn't really matter to her anyway. She would saw that knows the guy well enough for that anyway.

"Okay... Back to my first question then, what are you doing here? It doesn't look like you're only paying a visit."

Jean didn't know how to reply to him. She was pretty sure that Jackson and Hans have yet to tell him about the fact that she knew they were terrorists and wanted to know what they were up to. Was it a good idea to tell Wayne about that?

"She knows."

Both Jean and Wayne turned to Jackson.

"What does she know?"

"What we do."

For a moment, everything was quiet. Wayne's hands had stopped moving and he was staring at Jackson as if he had gone mad or something. "Can you repeat that again, but slowly and more clearly?"

"She. Knows. That. We. Are. You know what," he quickly finished the last part.

"..." Wayne gave Jackson a look like he was asking, 'You're not being serious, are you?'

"Nope."

"Are you-" Wayne stopped himself as he was about to start yelling at Jackson. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before opening them again. "Can you tell me what you were thinking when you did that?"

"Thinking? I wasn't thinking," Jackson admitted. "If I had been thinking then I wouldn't have done something so dumb."

"Makes sense." Wayne banged his head against the wall for a moment before getting up from the floor. "So tell me, what are going to do now that you got her involved in this kind of stuff?"

"Uhhh... Take responsibility for it?" he said with an uncertain voice.

"That's expected. What I'm trying to ask is if you're trying to recruit her or something? You know that we only tell people about this stuff if we're going to recruit them into the team. Did you forget?"

"Wait what No, I don't want to be a part of this," Jean blurted out. She only wanted to know what was going on and didn't want to get dragged into the terrorist mess.

"You don't exactly have a choice now," Wayne told her. His face was grim and he didn't look like he was kidding. "Now that you know who we are, do you think that we would just let you do whatever you want? It's either you join us or you die."

"Woah, woah, woah! What do you mean join or die!? We don't have that sort of thing do we?" This was Jackson's first time hearing something like that.

"We do."

"What!?"

"We have yet to enforce it because when we recruit a member we need to do a thorough background check to make sure that they will accept the offer. If we have even the slightest doubt, we don't approach them," Wayne explained.

"So you're telling me that Jean now has to join us or she will have to disappear? What kind of cr*p is that?"

"Sorry, but that's how it works."

Wayne turned to Jean who had been quiet this entire time taking in what was going on.

"Your decision?"

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