Spectra

Chapter 20

Emily

The bus dropped me off at the edge of my neighborhood and so I started walking home. It was a cold, sunny afternoon and turned out to be pretty nice so I didn't feel like running home, at the speed of light. Which I can do. Crazy right? It's still pretty hard to believe.

As I walked I felt my phone vibrate in my coat pocket. A text from an unknown number. After pulling off a glove, I looked at it. It was a video. I played it.

"Hello Emily, or Spectra I guess." The face of a familiar looking girl appeared on my screen. A sneer grew on her face as if she knew something I didn't. Then the camera switched and showed a strange glass box with a few inches of water in the bottom. My stomach dropped as I saw Lucas angrily banging on the clear walls.

"As you can see, I have your friend Lucas. The only way you'll find out where he is, is if you fix my sister. Let me explain, my sister used to have a job at American Eagle. The very same store you blinded three innocent people in. My sister is one of them, she's now permanently blind. Because of you. Ever since then she hasn't been able to do simple things. Because of you she isn't the same person she was just months ago. She was my legal guardian but because she can't even take care of herself, soon I'll be sent away to a foster home." Her story almost made me feel bad for her, but then I saw Lucas pounding on the walls of his glass jail.

"If you don't find a cure within the next few hours, both of us will lose someone we care about. If he dies before you find a cure, I take another person you love and do the same thing. I'd hurry before you have no one else left that you love. Oh, and call the police and your identity will be broadcasted throughout the city." She abruptly and irritably ended the video by placing her hand over the camera.

Immediately I began running back to the Marshalls'. I was going so fast I could see the normally dimly glowing light around me shining bright. I ran down into the lab where Mrs. Marshall was carefully working. She was in the middle of pouring one substance into another beaker with another substance. However, she spilled them when I sped in. She groaned and frowned at me. Then she sighed before pulling off her soaked gloves and moving her goggles.

"Hey. You look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong?" I started hyperventilating and rubbing my temples. I didn't care what the girl said, I needed to call the police. "Emily?"

"Lucas. A girl took him." She had a look of confusion on her face so I pulled out my phone. After pulling up the video I gave her my phone. Her mouth formed an o and she covered her mouth with her hand. At the end she began shaking her head. "We have to call the police. It's the only way." She continued shaking her head.

"No. The lab has been working on a cure for blindness for years, I can figure it out. You are still not very popular in the city and if your identity is revealed you could be hunted," she spoke calmly. I wasn't sure how she could be so calm, her son was kidnapped by a psycho teenage girl and would be dead within hours. Plus the only way to get him out was a cure for blindness.

I kept my phone nearby just in case and we began working. Mrs. Marshal pulled up all the research and development of the cure. I read it over and to my relief it seemed like they were very close. Something was missing. I researched any development in other countries as Mrs. Marshall began replicating the cure from Mercury Labs.

I panicked as a half an hour passed quickly. Then another half an hour, it seemed like it had only been about five minutes. My phone buzzed and I scrambled to look at it. Another video. Mrs. Marshall ran over and watched it with me.