Chapter Text
It had been a long day, working at her office job and trying to get a minute break from this god-awful bot following her around. Gem knows it's there to 'protect' her but that doesn't make it any easier. She just continues the boring walk home, past plain gray and white buildings that kind of look like prisons, but are just the houses that are built for the people. She lives in one of them and finds some comfort knowing that she can get a break from this bot soon enough.
The walk home is uneventful. Going past the same buildings, her eyes tracing cracks in the path and watching cars drive by. Slightly shivering, Gem knew she should have brought a coat, it almost being winter and all, but she didn’t really care. She didn’t care too much about most things these days, seeing that she’s 26 and has practically no friends, except BigB. Another reason why she doesn’t see the point in caring is that it has been three years since the abduction of her brother.
Gem thinks over what she knows. She knows that the Watchers seem to kidnap in patterns, usually abducting around 1 person a month and going for people in their 20s, like her brother, Scott. Scott was the kind of person who could turn anything inappropriate, but usually in a fun and joking way. He was one of the only sources of comfort for Gem those days, after losing their parents when she was just 15, she had to care for him.
Then he joined the ranks of the missing. It was abrupt. Scott was hanging out at Gems place, but when he left she heard a scream outside of her complex that sounded like Scotts. With all of her fear and anger she jumped off her bed, ran out through the hallways, and out to the front heart beating out of her chest to help him.
But when she got out, he was gone. All the evidence that he was there was his bag. A light blue bag with some pins that stood out against the dark gray pavement with skid marks around it indicating that the car drove off hurriedly.
After that moment Gem decided to dedicate her life to save her brother, Scott and all of the other people that went missing or were taken from their family and/or friends. She saw it fit to do whatever it took, maybe even killing some of those idiotic watchers if she had the chance.
When Gem had gotten back to her small, single-level apartment, she knew, like all days, she had until 8am on the next day without the bot.
The bots are something the government used to surveil its citizens. One hovered above each citizen, watching their every move and sometimes listening in on conversations. The whole idea was to suppress what could or couldn’t be said, and take out anyone who had plans of rebellion. It took protests to get the government to give its citizens some privacy in the sense of keeping the bots out of their houses from 6pm to 8am.
No one knows quite how the original protesters were able to organize and execute it without the government knowing, but the important part was that they could. She wanted to be like them. Breaking the odds and creating change in Hermiton. That gave Gem some hope of freeing her brother.
She was slowly losing hope, though. She knew she had to find Scott, but it had been 3 years since that day. She plopped herself down on her green bed and let out a large sigh. As she was staring at the ceiling she reminisced about the days with Scott.
He always brightened up the dark world that they lived in. Scott always seemed so carefree, even though the government seemed to be out for them. It was always Gem's brother that made her laugh. He was the only person that could. She first noticed when the police seemed to be looking closer at them right before Scott turned 20, or more specifically, Scott.
That should’ve been the first warning sign, but Gem tried to focus on what was important to her, Scott’s wellbeing. They had still lived together, mostly due to money being tight. Gem honestly didn’t mind, it meant that she could be closer to Scott.
He had moved out just a few months before his abduction, and that could have been why he was targeted.
Gem was thinking over that and came to the conclusion that the Watchers had planned to get Scott, maybe more of the people who went missing. It was 2 weeks away from the date she had chosen to try to save Scott 3 years ago. She had thought it would be enough time for her to plan, but she realised she may not have had enough time.
After looking through it, Gem came to the realisation that she knew more and had more stuff than she had thought. She had an old floor plan of one of the most well known Watcher owned lab, which was coincidentally one suspected of human experimentation. She had noted down schedules of police movement. She had a theory of how the Watchers decided to choose, ugh, test subjects.
The title made her want to puke. She had realised shortly after Scott was gone that he had probably been taken to run some shady tests on. She ran her hand through her curly, orange hair as she was trying to formulate some rag-tag kind of plan.
As Gem was doing so, writing down notes, sketching, and having horrible ideas doomed for failure, her stomach let out a big grumble.
“Ughhh,” Gem whined, “why now of all times.”
She knew it was 8pm now and she hadn’t eaten a proper meal that day, but why in the middle of her scheming! Her stomach let out another rumble, bigger than the last and she caved. Her stomach had also kinda started to hurt, so she walked into her small kitchen and made a sandwich. It was a pretty plain one, but it was good enough by Gem’s standards.
She ate as she continued planning. She knew she would have to get a bit more info first, so to her own shady bullshitter it would be…
Tomorrow.
She was too tired to go and it was too late anyways. No one was allowed outside after 9pm, and it was 9:16pm.
Gem got into her pajamas and brushed her teeth, etc, before retiring to her bed for the night. She got comfy and, as she was drifting away, thought, I will save you Scott. I promise. I may not know how I can hope anymore, but I will save you.