“It might just be my eyes getting worse with age, but are you… lifting lighter weights today? You know, the general idea about this is that you go up instead of down.”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” Troy quipped back, the young man trying his best. It was not easy for everyone. Especially not when they had been involved in testing worth thousands of calories while also providing more than enough engagement for almost every muscle in his body. “Work is hard on both body and soul. Especially the body.”

“What kind of paperwork could possibly tire out your muscles?” Charlie asked curiously, the muscular man not stopping once in his own routine. As talking had been a normal activity for them to do while in the gym, the two had coordinated on what they did when. This was especially easy to do, as Troy had wisely decided to throw all that coordination-trouble over at the oldest in their army of two.

He might have been able to name many different parts of the body, yet that did not mean he could use those names for anything. Density, uses, and just the general location was way out of reach for him. He knew where biceps were, and that's enough for him. Might have been better to not know, as he damned them to the end of the earth mentally. Those bastards were not letting him get one repetition with his usual weights. Nor did they budge with one kilo under. Or two. Three did cause some movement, but it tired him out too quickly.

Truly, Troy could only laugh at Charlie’s question, both out of the sheer stupidity of it and from how much trouble he would be in if he gave any hint about the truth. As was clear by now, the official people working in the facility were not the ones doing tests in the same way as him. They would normally be behind a glass screen for protection, not physically moving around. That was for… the more disposable ones.

Charlie could possibly guess that the man was doing something like that, though. His gaze could not be fooled, all those utility implants of his doing more trouble than they should on the situation. Maybe it was a good thing that Charlie was not making it clear that he could see how much damage there was. That would just cause another bout of awkwardness.

“I’ll tell you when you get a high enough clearance,” Troy said, playing it all off as a joke only understood between friends. And that was kinda true since the young man was alluding to an extremely illegal event that had transpired earlier in the same day.

Grabbing a pair of dumbells another kilo down, the young man got back to work on testing his arms. They were feeling quite weak, even when he wasn't putting additional pressure on them. But, that was to be expected, with how much work they had been put to use. Dr Hale might have been faking all that resentment for him, but that did certainly not mean she wasn't a slave driver normally. How that woman could be faster than him when setting it all up was a question that would be unanswered for millennia. Well, it was probably her own augmentations helping her along, but who could be sure about that? That woman was a beast of her own class, in both physical and mental aspects.

“Hey, that's not fair!” Charlie whined, playing it up for a joke. “We both know that I am never getting up to the same levels as you. You do realise that all the extra papers you have to sign are purely due to your level, right? I have it easy compared to you, and I will never be letting go of that privilege. Though, that boss of yours might have other ideas. Quite a funny fellow he was.”

A funny fellow. Troy would have lied at that if there wasn't a chance of the aforementioned funny fellow getting offended by his reaction. That was the funniest thing about him, after all. He was always watching, always studying Troy. If he reacted to the wrong thing in the wrong way, there was a great chance he would get executed within the day, without ever knowing that he had been found out. How fun it all was, the pressure being nearly unbearable! Smile and wave, or else the funny man would get him.

“I think the word you are looking for is 'eccentric,`” Troy corrected Charlie, trying to downplay the situation without having an abnormal reaction to it in any way. Being polite about shit-talking one’s superior was a normal procedure of course. Those above were always listening in one way or another. “He knows what he can do, and he can certainly do it well. And he is also very serious about keeping his occupation hidden.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know I screwed up a little. But, who can blame me? It all came from the heart,” Charlie responded, somehow being so serious while still sounding like it was all a long-running joke of a conversation. Couple that with those unstable movements of weights being lifted into the air, and the man truly did look like a monster. The shoulders were still being warmed up for higher weights, but that did not mean the current limit wasn't impressive in and of itself. From the numbers on it, the man was already lifting more than Troy weighed.

However, was that even a good standard anymore. While he had always been a bit on the skinny side, the young man was practically dropping down massively over the last few days. It was at least a kilo or three. While it wasn't on the level of being able to see his own ribs, it was still on the level where he was beginning to question just how good it all was for him.

When having asked Charlie about it, the man had assured him that it was all within what had been seen before. It seemed that those biological enhancers that he had taken while visiting the gym for the first time were still putting their effects on him. One of the functions was apparently to replace fat tissue with muscles. If one had a lot of one of them, it would be switched over slowly within a few days.

When coupled with Troy’s less-than-extraordinary eating habits as of late, the body had not been able to really produce that desired muscle tissue. So while still breaking down the fat, nothing had been built up to replace it. Therefore, a good chunk of his weight had been drained out, leaving him skinnier than ever before. That did explain the cold waves he had been getting as of late. His clothes had not done their job of stopping it yet, but he trusted that they would begin adapting for it soon.

Going back to the current topic, though, it was clear that the muscular man understood just how much trouble he could have been in. That had been thought of before, and that had only been with Troy’s less-than-satisfactory understanding of the facility’s inner politics. Charlie could have possibly been executed for his trespassing. It was not a sentence that would have been sent out lightly, but it was not something completely out of the picture either. Likewise, the man could have been given a special clearance for the project, forcing him into looking around for any areas where he could provide assistance. This was possibly an even lower ranking in possible outcomes, but it was still valid.

“Mind indulging me in just what that heart of yours thought would happen?” Troy asked, continuing their little charade. Meanwhile, the lower weights seemed to have helped the young man in actually getting progress done on his routine. While it might have been laughable weights being lifted, it was more than enough for his arms to threaten him mentally. By the tenth repetition, they were more than ready for the given rest period. Troy likewise needed one at that point, never having felt more tired inside. Forcing already used muscles to work like normal was the expectations of an idiot, and that was exactly what the man was expecting out of them. “I feel like I need some explanation put in here.”

“We all need an explanation for everything,” Charlie agreed with a nod, putting down the weights for once in their conversations. Troy liked to think it was because of the talking, but he fully understood that the man was just mirroring his break-times. “But, we can't get it all of the time. For the heart does what the heart wants to do. Our puny minds will never be able to understand the magnificence, the transcendence, the extremism that is-”

“So it was a spur-of-the-moment decision?”

“Ah, I see you understand perfectly,” Charlie said, confirming the suspicions that Troy had had from the start. While the man might have played dumb for a lot of the time spent with him, everybody close to him knew about the clarity that was behind those eyes. They normally understood everything around them, being able to divide one block into two for an infinite amount of times until the root of all problems were figured out.

Yet that ability had been lost as of late when Troy had handed the man an impossible situation. Charlie had been tricked into thinking the wrong thing, had been made to set himself entirely false foundations. This had caused so much confusion, so much new ground threaded. And the muscular man had clearly been out of his comfort zone when he had noticed that Troy had not come when he promised to.

What would anybody else have done, when they began to suspect the demise of one of their friends. Would they stay put, enjoy their lunch, and see if they turn up later in the day? Possibly. That would be the general mentality of many. There was always the chance of it being a misunderstanding, after all.

However, when a mind had already been put in a state of disarray, calm thoughts had already been put out of the equation. There was no such thing as waiting for the problem to solve itself. Critical thinking was out of the mind when emergency situations came along. If Troy had not appeared, then it would clearly mean that he had been stopped in some way.

Charlie had not been sure why this was and had gone out to search. The possibility of death had been on the man’s mind for so long, that the effects had been clear the moment he got close to the hidden door. At that point, the calm mind would have stopped him from revealing his knowledge about a secured project, meant only for the tightest of mouths. Again, a calm mind had not been there at that time.

The move-in had been swift, and without a code to punch into the hidden Numpad, Charlie had just started banging on the entrance, as if that would help with anything. Troy could not have guessed how it would have been during that time. That mindless banging had continued for nearly two minutes. It would have continued for several more, if not for the insiders’ decision to put a stop to it.

Without any discussion, Troy was decided to be the one to bring Charlie inside. And that might just have been the best discussion anybody could have ever made. If Dr Hale had come out instead, that look of calm fury on her face, would he have assumed the worst? It might have been so.

Instead, the face of the young man had been the first thing shown once the door opened up, revealed to be good and well. Charlie had been able to compose himself quickly by that point, still needing several seconds to get back into his normal mentality. Being shown that the one he had worried about was alive and well had likely been one of the best things to ever happen. Again, Troy was not able to even imagine it, not for a lack of trying.

Charlie had been lucky after that, being able to play it all off as a mild caring for a coworker. If it had been done in any other way, if there had been any other excuse, Dr Fidelis might just have decided to take it seriously.

Was the excuse used even true? Troy had been wondering about that for some time now. It was certainly a plausible excuse, the man being bored with his work and just deciding to do nothing productive for several hours at a time. Yet, would he not have decided to visit some of his friends instead? The young man might have been wrong to imagine that, yet he had always thought of the man to be an extrovert, feeding off of others to gain energy. Since the man had mentioned the clear lack of anything around that part of the facility, why had he been there to start with?

Troy wanted to ask about that. It was a personal curiosity. But, it was not something that would ever be asked. Asking too much about the subject, being anything more than extremely vague about it, or even just focusing on it too much had the potential to bring them doom. If Charlie truly did have other methods of knowing where the project was located, Dr Fidelis knowing of that fact could change the man’s decisions for the worse. A warning could turn into something that nobody wanted to think about.

“I figured it would be something like that,” Troy answered, shaking his head a little at the sheer incredulity of the man's words. He did not ask into it.

So, when the time was up, he just hefted his arms back into position and worked on another round of torturing his biceps. They were there for a reason after, and just sitting around doing nothing would not be good for anything.

… Troy did find some irony in that.