by Katrina Cope
She rolled her eyes when she looked at Dryden, who just shrugged. “Well, as much as I’ve grown to like him over the last year”—she softened her voice and leaned closer to them as someone sat at their table—“I just think he is hiding something, and I want to find out what. Don’t you?”
“I guess so.” Dryden appeared unconcerned.
“You boys are unbelievable. After everything that happened over the last year, you would think you would become a little more observant.” She shook her head, looking disappointed.
“You’re right,” Liam agreed, leaning in closer to the other two, “but he was trying to help us find out who built that explosive train before it all got blown up with the science lab. To me, that means he is one of the good guys, strange or not.”
“That’s how I see it too.” Dryden grinned.
“That’s not what I mean.” Hayley shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t trust him, it’s just that I would like to get to the bottom of his strangeness.”
“All right,” Liam said without enthusiasm.
“Okay.” Dryden sounded as though he was merely attempting to ease Hayley’s concerns. “We’ll keep a closer eye on him, just in case. But I’m not treating him as an imposter.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Hayley crossed her arms, looking insulted.
They finished their morning tea and headed off to their next class, walking across the grass plane toward the technology room.
“Wait up, guys!” a voice called from the side.
They looked over to see Brendan running toward them, trying to catch up. When he was within hearing range, he slowed down to match their walking pace.
“Decided to join us, did you?” Hayley snarled.
Liam elbowed her in the ribs.
“Ow!” She glared at Liam, which he and Dryden reflected. Defeated, she tried a nicer approach. “Did you manage to finish what you needed to do?” she asked, an innocent interest masking what Liam knew was running through her thoughts.
“Yes, thank goodness, I did.” Brendan sounded relieved.
They saw Dr. Graham Ernest heading hastily in the opposite direction. He carried something covered with a beach towel, and a distracted look etched his dark-skinned face. He appeared to be oblivious to everything around him, only focusing on where he was going.
“Hi, Dr. Ernest!” Liam called.
“Butt kisser,” Brendan muttered loudly enough to be heard only by the current company.
The three looked briefly at Brendan, wondering where that comment had come from. Dr. Ernest had earned their respect, and they were surprised by his response. Their shock was dampened by Dr. Ernest’s response to the greeting.
“Oh. Hello, students,” he replied pleasantly, yet his demeanor remained distracted. His dark-brown eyes focused on the students only long enough to acknowledge them. He wore a lab coat over his everyday clothes, which consisted of a navy-blue suit and an aqua dress shirt, finished off with a blue, diagonally striped tie. It was a hot day, and the sun gleamed off his balding head. A trickle of sweat ran off his forehead, continuing down the side of his face until it ended in his salt-and-pepper beard.
“Do you need any help with that, Dr. Ernest?” Dryden offered.
“Hmm?” The doctor looked absently at Dryden until finally, it hit him that he was referring to the item in his hand.
“Oh! No, thank you. I believe you students need to be running along to class now.”
“True. But you just look like you could use a little help,” Dryden insisted.
“It’s very nice of you, but no, I’m fine, thank you. I must keep moving.” He turned, leaving the puzzled students staring at his back as he retreated.
“He seems a little distracted,” Hayley said as they stood unmoving.
“Doesn’t he?” Liam agreed. “I wonder what he has under that towel?”
“Probably a new wig,” Brendan said. He followed it by a short laugh, amused by his own comment.
The three students looked at Brendan in astonishment.
“What? He could use some hair.” He shrugged. “Oh, come on. You know it’s true.”
Hayley shook her head and continued to walk toward their next class. “I said nothing.”
“What?” Brendan asked again to Hayley’s back. He looked at the two boys.
Liam and Dryden looked at Brendan, then at the back of Hayley, and then back at Brendan. They decided to follow Hayley without saying anything.
Brendan did a light jog to catch up with the other three. They continued until they arrived at their technology class.
Professor Timothy Green was sitting, as usual, at the front of the class behind a computer, his sizeable rear end barely fitting on the chair. He had short dark-brown hair that framed the top of his head and made a definite contrast to his extremely white skin. Beside his computer was an enormous drinking cup. It was filled to the brim with an extravagant iced coffee that was thick as a milkshake and topped with extra ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles.
He was in his early twenties, very young for a professor, although he was one of those child prodigies and he certainly knew his work in technology. “Hey, guys! Take a seat, and let’s get these computers turned on. Today, we will be starting a website design. I want you to think of something you would like to make a website for and then turn it into an informative website. The more interactive your site is, then the higher I will grade you.”
Brendan suddenly called from the back of the class, “Cool!”
When the rest of the class glanced back at him, including Hayley, Liam, and Dryden, he shrugged his shoulders. “What? I love making websites.”
Hayley shook her head as she glanced at Liam and Dryden with a told-you-so look while shaking her head.
The comment wasn’t helping Liam and Dryden prove Hayley wrong about Brendan being extra weird lately.
“Okay!” Professor Green reclaimed the students’ attention. “Now, we have touched on this already, but you will find further instructions on how to build a website in chapter three of your textbooks. If you still have trouble, let me know, and I will come and help you.”
The students turned to the chapter and started making their websites. Liam steadily worked on his skateboarding site, thinking of his brother, Matt. He was also quite familiar with skateboarding terminology and the general moves, thanks to listening to his older brother. He was also familiar with the dates of all the competitions held in the local area. For a self-professed nerd, he was doing pretty well.
The lesson was about halfway through, and he had already added links for YouTube footage of the moves. He was feeling quite pleased with himself when a strange-looking picture appeared in the middle of his screen. The image had nothing to do with his subject, nor had he seen it anywhere while searching for photos and footage for his website. He was puzzled. He tried desperately to remove it, but without success. He was about to ask Professor Green for help when he caught a look at Hayley’s screen. It also had the same image in the middle of the screen. The first thing in his head was that Hayley had been playing a trick on him.
“Trust you to place something in the middle of my screen,” he said to her.
“What?” She shot a frustrated look in his direction while hitting the keyboard keys a little harder.
He indicated her screen with his head, a little less sure of himself all of a sudden. “The picture. Did you put it on my screen?”
“No. Why would I put a picture on your screen?” she asked, clearly annoyed.
Dryden looked over at the two screens from behind. “Hey! That’s the same image I have stuck on my screen.”
They both looked at him in shock. Their attention then turned to the rest of the class as aggravated keyboard strikes got louder and louder by the second. As they looked at different screens, they realized that they were all inundated with the same image in the middle of the screen. The same irritated looks were plastered on all of the students’ faces. Feeling the fru
stration of not being able to remove the picture from their screens, the students in the class started to look around for Professor Green and to request help from anyone who was able to assist.
A loud laugh sounded across the room. All of the students redirected their attention toward that chuckle. To their dismay, they all ended up looking at Brendan, who sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head. His pale face was full of mischief and pride. By that time, Professor Green had looked up to see what the commotion was. Slowly, he dragged his weight off the chair and came around to look at the students’ screens.
Once the man had a look at the picture of a clown fish, Brendan spoke through his laughter. “All that you need to do to get rid of it is to hit escape, and then control-D. This will remove the picture from your screen.”
Desperate to remove the image from their screens, they did as instructed. However, they were horrified to find that it didn’t remove the picture—instead, it showed an animated picture of a boy who turned around and pulled his pants halfway down. He then shook his bottom in their faces—not only at the students, but also to Professor Green.
Hayley, Liam, and Dryden looked at Brendan in astonishment.
- Chapter Three -
Eva Breaks Scarlet
Memories came back to Jayden slowly. The left side of his body ached, and it felt as if he had fallen on his face. Involuntarily, his body rocked back and forth, sending his mind into a sickly spin. It felt strange. Slowly, he realized that a female voice was calling his name. He gradually opened his eyes and was welcomed by a dark room with a small amount of light trickling in from the room next door. Someone crouched over the top of him, shaking him softly.
His eyes began to focus, revealing his location. The female voice was clearer, along with his vision, and he tried to figure out what was going on.
“Jayden? Jayden? Are you all right?” Eva leaned over him. Strands from her long dark-brown hair hung loosely around her shoulders and shone dimly in the limited light. Concern was written all over her face. She held something in her hand and pressed it against the side of his face. A cold wetness touched his skin, and he winced—it was on the side that felt as though it had collided with the ground.
He was puzzled. What happened? As he looked around, he started to make out shapes in the semidarkness.
Voices sounded close by, and he searched for their owners, catching movement several feet away. Aaron was sprawled on the floor not far from him—his eyes were closed, and his thin body looked lifeless. Avando and Robert worked quickly on him, detaching wires and equipment from the surrogate controls. Avando placed an ice pack on Aaron’s head. It looked swollen and bruised. They were trying to get him to regain consciousness.
A wave of concern engulfed Jayden. He didn’t like seeing his good friend that way. He turned back to Eva, who was still trying to get him to respond to her question while continuing to dab his sore face with the ice pack.
“Jayden, are you all right?” she asked again.
“What happened? Is Aaron all right?” he asked. His voice was husky, all energy knocked out of him.
“Don’t you remember?” Confusion filled Eva’s face.
“That blow must have really been something. You guys were operating the surrogates for the simulator exercise when you had to detonate the weapons room you found. But the local soldiers in the village discovered you, and they stopped you from getting away before the explosives went off. It was bizarre when your surrogates blew up. It knocked your physical bodies hard. You flew.”
Jayden thought about what she had said, but he was baffled. He rubbed his head. “Are you sure that it was a simulator?” he asked as he started to sit up with her aid.
“Yes, of course. We are in the simulator room.” A puzzled look filled her face, and concern deepened the color of her dark-brown eyes.
Jayden looked around a little more and finally recognized the room. It was Professor Showden’s old office and technical room. It held many memories from about a year before, when Aaron, Professor Anna, and he had fought Professor Showden, who tried to commit an act of terrorism. The professor had been taken to the authorities, and the room had been transformed into a simulator and practice room for the more advanced groups to practice in simulated real-life situations.
“Why do you ask?” she asked.
“It just wasn’t the reaction I expected if our surrogates were blown up. The outcome for us is quite harsh,” Jayden said groggily, still gathering his thoughts to piece them together. There hadn’t been a situation like that before. It certainly packed a punch. The surrogates, though very high tech, still needed to be operated manually, and that was probably why it threw the operator when it projected the surrogate. It still seemed strange.
“I think you guys must have hit your heads when the blast threw you.” Eva dabbed his head again with the ice.
“That would explain a lot.” Jayden looked at Aaron in concern. He was starting to wake up, which put Jayden more at ease, and he saw his relief reflected on the faces of Avando and Robert. They propped up Aaron’s head until he gained more consciousness while continuing to hold the ice on his head.
“That was a difficult mission, wasn’t it?” The worry creases were slowly disappearing from Avando’s face as he saw the boys slowly recovering. “We will have to find a way in which the surrogate operators are not so vulnerable in a mission,” he said, looking at Robert.
Robert nodded. Ever since the removal of Professor Showden, he had become part of the maintenance group for the surrogates and sometimes even the tweaking of Scarlet, the primary operating system of the Sanctum. His technical skills had advanced quite a bit in the last six months.
A commotion sounded at the main door of the building.
It wasn’t long before Niles burst into the room. “Oh, my lord!” he exclaimed, placing his two open hands on each side of his face. “What happened here?” His face, bordering on handsome, looked flustered. His usually neat dark hair was blown all over his head. He had just come from the wintery weather, and the gusty winds from the mountainside had played with his usually pristine appearance. He must have been in a rush to see what was wrong in the tech room, for he had evidently forgotten to straighten himself out before being seen.
“Niles.” Avando stood to welcome him. “So glad you came.”
“Oh! I got an urgent message from Scarlet,” he said flamboyantly while pulling out his mobile device from the pocket of his long tailored chocolate-brown pants as if to prove it to them. “Of course, I had to come.” He put the phone back in his pocket and ran his fingers through his hair as if he had suddenly realized that he had forgotten to straighten it. He then tucked his salmon-colored business shirt neatly into his pants. “So, what’s going on? She tells me we have lost two surrogates and their equipment.” His voice held genuine concern.
Niles had been a student at the Sanctum and had already left and moved on. Avando had asked him to return because he was in urgent need of someone who had worked with Scarlet’s programming before. He seemed delighted to receive a job and thrived in his important role, executing it with passion and caring for the technical equipment. His gray eyes clouded with concern as he asked, “What happened?”
Avando proceeded to get up slowly from Aaron’s side while grabbing his cane at the same time. He explained the situation to Niles while progressing slowly toward him in a half limp.
“Oh, how drastic!” Niles placed his hand on Avando’s arm lightly. “I still can’t believe we lost the two surrogates and their equipment. Oh,” he added while looking at Jayden and Aaron as an afterthought, “but naturally I’m glad you two are okay.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Jayden grumbled back, unconvinced.
“No, actually, I do mean it.” Niles tried to reassure him as he observed Jayden’s and Aaron’s disbelieving faces. He smiled and gave out a half giggle with a snort. “Ahhh. Here I go again, putting my brilliant people skills to good use.” He looked at them briefly with emb
arrassment before he turned back to Avando. “I have a lot of work to do—with Robert’s help, of course.” He pointedly gazed in Robert’s direction, as though remembering his people skills. “We will need to fix the flaw and build new and improved surrogates.”
Avando nodded. “Yes. We can’t have them causing the operators to be hurt so easily if they are blown up. Now, if you will excuse me, I think we need to get Jayden and Aaron to the doctor to be checked out. I’m sure you are perfectly capable of looking into the restoration further.”
Niles nodded.
Avando continued, “I’ll send Robert back to help after he has assisted me with taking these two to the doctor.” He indicated Jayden and Aaron with a hand.
Eva helped Jayden up from the floor, while Robert struggled to pull Aaron into a supported walk, even with Avando’s help. Leaving Niles, they all proceeded toward the main building.
They were situated high on the mountain, which was encircled by smaller mountains. Blustery cold winds whipped around them, trying unsuccessfully to take away the magnificence of the scenery. Deep valleys surrounded them. On one side of their mountain, a broad valley lined the bottom, filled with a large lake.
They traveled a crest filled with smaller mountains surrounding them and not a single building in sight. They appeared to be in the middle of wilderness, a sight that the teens were used to, but in fact, the many mountains surrounding them were their school buildings—inside each of the mountains were well-disguised, luxurious buildings built by Avando’s generosity to help the young, homeless children.
Jayden initially was surprised by Avando. He had been a very successful businessman but didn’t appear to carry any of the arrogance associated with well-to-do business people. He had a generous heart, obviously, to take in so many young, unfortunate children off the streets and bring them to a place that paralleled a number-one holiday destination, ranked for its style and serenity. Out of habit, he often dressed in a smart suit, giving off the look of a wealthy businessman—until it came to Tae Kwon Do time, and then he was full of surprises. Jayden had learned in the early stages not to be fooled by that cane. No unsuspecting person would want to come up against him in a fight, that’s for sure. The dignified, gentle businessman was a ninth dan black-belt ninja. A couple of Jayden’s street friends who had joined the Sanctum the same day he did found out the hard way. Jayden smiled to himself at the thought that it hadn’t worked out too well for them.
