Origin (Book 2)

Chapter 20

A couple of hours into the flight, Wren said the most unexpected thing.

"Where's the bathroom?" he asked.

I looked at Alissa. She looked at me. Neither one of us knew if there was one on the jet.

"Uh, hey." Alissa spoke into her watch. "Professor Strong?"

"Yes?" He responded loudly enough for all of us to hear.

"Is there a bathroom on this jet?"

I snickered as we heard him slap himself on the head.

"No, it does not, sorry," he said in a monotone voice.

"Can we stop, then?" Wren asked.

"No," the Professor said. "If need be, you'll just have to pee on yourself. Need I remind you that Wren is a prisoner? We simply cannot allow him to have any sort of contact with people unless we know for sure that he's not an enemy agent."

"You heard that, Wren?" I said, swiveling my seat to face him. "Just do it."

He glared at me.

Without another word said, the professor shut off comms.

"Are you really going to let him use the bathroom on himself?" Alissa asked. "That's heartless."

"That's necessary," I said. I winced, realizing I sounded just like my dad.

She got up and took control of the jet after taking it off of autopilot. When we reached land a few minutes later, she landed the plane in a hidden deserted area next to a broken-down gas station.

"How did you learn to fly?" I asked her.

"I taught myself," she said.

"To fly a plane," I specified.

"Oh, I thought you meant how to fly fly. My dad. He's- he was- in the Air Force."

"Cool," I said. "That had to have been fun, flying with your dad. You did do that, right?"

"I thought about it, but no," she said.

"Excuse me! Bathroom, now, please," Wren said. "I really need to go."

"Right," I said. "This is off the record," I said to both of them. Alissa didn't argue.

She pressed the button for the ramp to lower. I gave Wren my jacket to cover his cuffs under. He could use the bathroom with them on, I wasn't that stupid.

"Try anything, and I'll drop a giant brick on you," I warned him.

He laughed in answer to my threat, but I wasn't joking.

Bricks were easy for me to construct; I could make a lot of basic things that weren't complex (i.e. rocks, cuffs), and the wings, shield, and sword. I had no idea how I knew to make those, but I thought it could be because I knew why they looked like, and the voice had described two of them to me.

Speaking of, where was the voice now?

I kept Wren in front of me again as we walked into the store. He struggled a little to open the door, so I did it for him. The clerk at the counter stared at us quizzically, but didn't do much else.

I waited outside his stall. He whistled, a crazy thing to do in a situation like this. And the funny thing was, it didn't seem to slow him down too much with the cuffs on.

I decided to go as well. After I washed my hands, and Wren rinsed them off, we left the gas station without so much as a hiccup.

"This is amazing," I said.