In her senior year of high school, Natalie Hope reunites with her friends, Adam and Barbara, at the funeral of the fourth member of their once-close gang, Jake. They remember the made-up superhero game they played as kids called "the Astronites," wh...
"Princess Aquashine, President Kindword invites you to the dining hall for breakfast at your earliest convenience."
That was the phone call that rudely woke Barbara from her deep sleep in her Guesthouse Hotel suite. As much as she loved being back in her opulent room, it had lost most of its appeal. Staying without Natalie, Victor, Aleph, and Ador made the Guesthouse Hotel less homey.
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She exited her room and knocked on the neighboring door.
"Hey," Adam tiredly opened. He looked like he was running on low battery.
"Everything okay?" Barbara asked.
Adam sighed. "I don't even know."
He fell back into the room. It was covered wall-to-wall with charts, maps, and battle plans.
"What's all this?" Barbara asked, following Adam back to his bed.
Adam rubbed his weary eyes. "I couldn't sleep. Too much stuff on my mind."
"What were you trying to do, plan the whole battle overnight?" Barbara asked.
Adam shrugged his shoulders. "I don't trust anyone to do the right thing anymore," he said. "You know the Mandata will be here in an hour?"
The news didn't worry Barbara in the slightest. She'd been expecting it. Still, she never fully considered that the next sixty minutes of her life would potentially be her last.
"We really aren't going home, are we?" she asked Adam.
An awkward silence sat between them.
"Everybody knows about what happened to us," Adam sighed. "It saw it in the newswipes this morning. Half the Elem planets broke away and formed the CEF. More are joining them." His lips quivered. They sounded like two keys rubbing against each other. "I should've found a quicker way to the Principle reactor," he trembled. "Natalie would still be alive if I did. She's dead . . . because of me."
Barbara stared at him. "Why would you think that?"
"Because it's true . . . mathematically and logically. You don't see the numbers in your head like I do. They don't lie. This is all because of me. I played the biggest part in our failure."
Barbara swatted away the battle papers and scooted towards her ailing friend.
"You can't calculate life, Adam," she asserted. "I'm not nearly as smart as you are when it comes to stuff like this, but I know that life isn't about following numbers or probabilities or whatever. It's about doing what you think is right."
"Then what's the right thing to do?" Adam frustratingly asked. "Ignore everything and go with your gut?"
"Not for your whole life," Barbara softly replied. "But for certain moments, going with your gut is all you've got. It's what made you fly into the race of comets, right?"
