Apocalypse [h.s.]

Chapter nineteen

We were all gathered in Zayn's flat to talk about the situation with Niall. Jenna had taken off earlier on the day because, luckily, she had to catch up with something at work so she took an early flight home. Zayn had yelled at me and been mad at me for hours for just inviting her into his flat without his permission, and went on and on about how she never. Shut. Up. I just apologized and laughed of it all.

"So, should we get started then?" Liam asked while grabbing a beer from Zayn's fridge.

Zayn sighed from the couch. "Yeah."

"You know, this thing is kind of stupid. I mean, we obviously aren't going to find Niall, nor save him. We don't even know where he is, for God's sake! He could be in Uganda, or fucking Papua New Guinea!"

I rolled my eyes at the curly-haired boy standing in the corner as usual. "Always such positivity from you, isn't it?"

Harry snorted. Zayn stood up from the couch, his teeth gritting with a big frown on his face. I glared at him, until he finally decided to relax and sit down again.

Harry put up his hands in defence and chuckled. "Woah there, tough guy."

I went over to Zayn and sat down next to him, patting him on his back and smiling at him. He looked at me and smiled softly, taking my hand in his and squeezing it.

Harry cleared his throat. "Well, we better get started then."

Liam sat down next to us with a beer and a bowl of nachos.

"Yup" he said and put down the bowl onto the table, wanting to share with the rest of us, which did not come to any surprise to me. He had always been one to share.

Zayn lay out a big map on the table. It almost pushed the bowl of nachos down on the floor, that's how wide it was.

"This is a map of all the different Global Makers businesses and factories. As you can see, they are all over America and in some parts of Asia" he said and pointed here and there on little, red dots for us to see.

"Now, the first thing we have to do is find out where he is" he continued and looked at all of us. "Got any ideas?"

We all sat quiet and thought to ourselves. It was a hard question, although we had thought of it so many times we probably lost count.

"Well," Liam started. "I don't think they would necessarily bother to move him that far. I mean he's just a normal hostage for them, right?"

"Yeah, but I don't think that's the reason they move people; because they find some unusual people that may be a threat to them or something. I think they just move random people to random places because they don't have enough money or space to keep them all in the same factory" Harry said, sounding somehow engaged to the conversation.

I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. "But where could he be? I mean, sure, we could maybe find out which area he's in, but there must be more than one factory in one area, right?"

Zayn nodded. "There's about fifteen to twenty factories in one country, which means five to ten in one area. But they do part them into different groups of people, though."

"What groups?" I asked.

"Like, black people, white people, asian people, and then there's religious people, and some other-"

"Religious people?" I asked eagerly.

"Yeah. But Niall's not religious, so-"

"No, but he's from Ireland, right? And Ireland is mostly a catholic country, and as far as they know, Niall's a catholic. They'll assume he's one because he's from Ireland" I said.

They widened their eyes and grinned. I felt a sense of pride and confidence coming upon me. It felt good to be the smart one for once, and to actually help.

"Good, Violet. Now we only have to figure out which country he's in" Harry said from the armrest of the couch and smiled at me.

I smiled back and looked back down on the map. There were so many red dots all over the map. Suddenly, it all felt hopeless, thinking that all those red dots were places Niall could possibly be.

But I couldn't give up. I had to be hopeful. For Zayn.

Suddenly a phone rang. Harry picked up his phone from his pocket and answered it.

"Hello, it's Harry" he said in a questioning tone.

The rest of us sat there casually, thinking that it was probably just his grandmother calling to hear if he had found a girlfriend so that he could put a baby inside her and make his grandmother some grandchildren before her days were over.

"In Washington?"