The Waitress ↯ C. Randall

Chapter 7 | Danger, Danger, I'm a Stranger [REWRITTEN]

THE LAST TWO WEEKS OR SO had been surprisingly normal for Quinn. The random disappearances of her friends were a little less frequent now, thankfully. It still bugged her, but she tried to push aside her worries and suspicion and instead focus on her work. She didn't need to freak out again like last time. Besides, things were going well right now. She still joked about the fact that Miss Morgan gave Shelby Dino dung as a "present," and each time she did Shelby would just get angry, then eventually laugh at how ridiculous it was.

Everything was going well, and Quinn hadn't even heard of any monster attacks happening this week, until the day that they all decided to test out this thing called the E-Tracer.

Now, Quinn had literally no idea how to use this thing. She was really just kind of dragged along so that the others who also had no idea how it worked could have another person to talk to. And, I mean, she got a free break from work in the middle of the day and was being allowed to just relax for once, so why would she deny that opportunity? She instead listened to songs on her phone through her headphones and closed her eyes. She sat and leaned on a nearby tree and let the sun rays hit her in all their warm glory.

At some point she opened her eyes to see Kendall, Shelby, and Riley working with the E-Tracer, Tyler writing in a journal, Koda squatting at the top of a tree and Chase picking off petals seemingly in a "She loves me, she loves me not," type way. She took off her headphones momentarily and listened.

"Monica loves me, Monica loves me not." Chase frowned but his expression quickly returned to normal. "Oh well, Monica's loss." He threw aside the plucked flower and began plucking a new one. "Tina loves me. Tina loves me not."

Of course, Chase did something like that. She laughed to herself a bit at the situation.

"Ok, I calibrated it to search the grid from left to the right." Riley said, still calculating in his mid what else to do. Seriously, Riley was nice and all, but how was he that smart? He could figure out basically anything in a second, always had some sort of plan and even knew how to program, well, whatever the heck the E-Tracer was. Quinn was seriously questioning if he was even human at this point.

"You know, sometimes I wonder if you're part robot, or you're just a robot because there is not way that you're fully human." Quinn said.

Riley chuckled. "Oh, shut up Quinn."

Quinn smiled and put back on her headphones. It was still on the same song, an Arctic Monkeys song, The Only Ones Who Know, and the familiar melody filled her ears.

For a few seconds Quinn got some peace and was able to completely clear her mind. It was a nice moment, serene even, until Koda suddenly jumped down from the tree right next to her and caused her to flinch out of instinct and shock.

"Koda. You scared me." Quinn said, taking off her headphones.

"I asked you to stop doing that, Koda." Tyler reminded Koda. Koda ignored the sentence though and instead looked around and sniffed the air. "Tyler, you smell." Koda said.

Tyler smelt his shirt. "I do?" Tyler asked. "No. The air. Smell." Koda said.

Suddenly something rang, but it sounded slightly different than the normal phone ringing sound. Tyler walked away from everyone for a few seconds and Quinn was suspicious. What is he doing? Is he just taking a phone call? What's that ringtone?

When he came back, he completely shut down the entire operation. "Hey, shut down the E-Tracer." Tyler said.

"Why do we have to shut down the E-Tracer?" Quinn asked. She stood up and wiped off the grass and one flower petal on her foot off of her. "We just need to get out of here, right now." Tyler explained.