Eavesdropping wasn’t something Aiden was proud of doing.
He couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy it, not as his hormones spiked and the blood rushed to the tips of his fingers, but it wasn’t something he went around advertising. He had a feeling the others knew, but none of them ever mentioned it, not to his face at least.
He usually brought them news of the outside world, things he had overheard the caretakers whisper about, but other times it was the latest gossip about the workers upstairs.
It was almost curfew, the clocks down the hallway loudly ticking. The noise faded into the background most of the time, but it was deafening at this time, when the others were in their rooms and the caretakers locked up the med-bay.
The door was slightly open and the angle revealed little to nothing of the room, but the voices floated out just fine.
“-let him slip away,” a gruff voice — Duke— murmured. “it was bound to get out, but they weren’t expecting it this soon-“
“-Soon?” a more nasally voice, Wren, responded. “It’s been twenty-six years.”
“26 years too soon. They say we should expect more soon.”
Aiden heard a clank as something heavy hit the metal table.
“Are we called in?” Wren asked. Duke must’ve answered silently because they kept quiet after that.
Aiden stepped back from the door. The hallway stretched straight past it, empty and exposed- if either of them stepped out, they’d see him immediately. Deciding not to push his luck, he turned left and slipped into his cohort.
