The Sound of Wind by Raegan Millhollin
**
After he turned in his report to Christian and Mr. Hansen, Hugo went in search of Dr. McFadden. One part of his brain, all weekend, had debated whether or not he should tell her what he’d found out about Ted. On the one hand, she probably really needed the information to help Ted, on the other, Maggie had removed those files from Gideon Enterprises for a reason. He’d promised he wouldn’t tell anyone what he’d found in them. But Ted might explode again if Dr. McFadden didn’t help him, and the file would most likely speed up the process. The doctor seemed genuinely interested in helping people and Hugo was confident she wouldn’t use the information in the file to replicate the experiments, or if he asked her not to, share the information with other people.
It was a risk, and he felt horrible for so quickly betraying Maggie, but it was something that needed to be done, and if he’d discussed it with her first, she probably would have agreed.
Dr. McFadden was easy to find. Hugo knocked lightly on her door and after a brief moment she welcomed him in.
“Oh hello Hugo. How are you doing?” Her mouth was turned down sympathetically.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, eyes finding the ground. “I’m fine. How are you?” Was he mumbling?
“Not bad. What can I do for you?” She responded, her voice gentle.
“I found out some information about Ted that you might find useful. Unfortunately there’s a lot of medical terminology that I don’t understand. I typed it up for you cause I thought you could help me understand it. I’m just not really supposed to be showing it-” the doctor cast a nervous glance around her room so Hugo abruptly stopped talking.
“How about we go out for coffee?”
Hugo glanced around the room but didn’t see anything worthy of going out to coffee for. Wait, were there listening devices in the room? Crap. He hadn’t thought of that. Would they really bug a doctor’s office though?
The doctor was scooping up her coat even before he could respond. His hands fell deeper into his pockets, “Yeah. That…uh sounds uh great.”
Once they were out of the building the doctor gave Hugo an apologetic smile. “Sorry, what you wanted to share sounded private; I didn’t want anyone overhearing us.”
“Your office is bugged?”
She nodded, pursing her lips, “Yes. My apartment too.”
Hugo’s eyes widened, “Really? Uh…how could you tell?”
She lifted a finger, a slightly mischievous expression crossing her lips, “I looked.”
“Oh. Why did you look?”
They were several blocks from the office building then, but Crysta still glanced over her shoulder, “After I found out about Ted, something seemed…” She looked Hugo in the eye, as if measuring his reaction, “wrong. Something’s wrong.”
Hugo picked at the lint in his pockets. He stared at her out of the corner of his eye, “You’re right. I think. There’s this chemical compound referred to as the Substance in some personnel files I got my hands on, and I think Ted was an unwitting participant in the test trials.”
“What?!” The doctor’s tone was incredulous and loud, but she quickly corrected herself, glancing around to make sure they hadn’t attracted any attention.
Hugo tapped the company laptop bag slung over his shoulder, “I’ll show you.”