The Andromeda Effect

Chapter 6 = Caught!

The next day, in the early afternoon, they all sat casually by the car, which was parked by a small woodland area in Banbury so that they could take a break before driving on towards Northampton. It was a very hot day, so Jenny had beforehand discretely changed into a different shirt with a matching skirt, as it was too hot for her jeans, And Sandra was wearing the same shirt, but had changed into some denim shorts and a pair of trainers. Maurice, Isaac and Bruce had all taken their coats off and had the top buttons of their shirts undone. 

"God..." Jenny muttered to herself. 

"What's up?" Asked Sandra.

"Before I came on this road trip with you in the first place, my parents made me promise to text them every couple of days to let them know I'm alright and stuff like that. I was gonna do it now, but there's no signal here." Jenny explained, and she then stood up. "I'll be back in a minute. I've gotta go and find some signal or else if it's much longer before they hear from me my parents'll go ballistic." 

"I'll come with you, to watch your back and make sure we hopefully don't have a repeat of yesterday morning." Said Bruce, and he, too, stood up. 

"Okay. We'll be back as soon as we can!" Jenny called out as she and Bruce walked off into the woods. 

A few seconds after Bruce and Jenny had gone, Maurice looked up to the sky and thought out loud, 

"It's strange, if you think about it. Before this month, every single person on this planet thought they were alone in the universe. Now me, you, Bruce, Isaac and Jenny know there's an inhabited planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. It makes you excited for the future. Makes you curious what the human race will find out next." 

"And if the universe really does go on forever, then god knows what humans will find out in a hundred years or so." Isaac added. "What stage society will be in. How many inhabited planets discovered." 

"Come to think of it, I genuinely am excited for the future now." Sandra leaned back against the BMW and also looked up to the pale blue, completely cloudless sky with them, in awe of what mysteries the universe held. "By the way, do you think that somewhere out in space, there's a planet inhabited by cat people?" 

"Could be possible." Maurice replied with a slight chuckle. "Why do you ask?" 

"'Cause I really like cats." Answered Sandra. "And I'm finding it funny imagining an alien cat-person meeting a domesticated Earth cat and then both playing with a ball of string together." 

Both Maurice and Isaac laughed a little bit at this. 

Meanwhile, in the woods, Bruce and Jenny were still looking for a good enough signal so that Jenny could text her parents to let them know she was okay.

Although at one point, she wasn't fully looking where she was going and she tripped over a tree root. She let out a yell of surprise, but luckily, Bruce noticed this and he stuck his arm out to stop her fall.

"Woah, easy there!" Said Bruce with a laugh.

"Thanks for the save." Jenny thanked him, although a second later, she noticed that Bruce had tensed up as if he'd noticed something very bad. "Bruce?" She asked him. "What's wrong?" 

"There's someone else here." He told her, and she began to feel slightly scared. 

A startled yelp was then heard from Jenny, and Bruce turned around to see that Dr Richard Oswald, one of the other scientists from the lab, had Jenny in a headlock and was pointing a gun at her head. Oswald was also the man who'd asked Sandra about the disappearance of Xianni in chapter 1. 

"Don't come any closer, Sanders." Oswald told him, cocking his gun. Jenny's eyes were wide with desperate fear. "Or else the girl gets lead poisoning." 

Bruce began to pretend to put his hands in the air as if he was surrendering, but then took the chance to swiftly kick Oswald in the shin, who instantly let go of Jenny and clutched his leg in pain. 

But the moment didn't last long, because 2 more of the lab agents suddenly appeared. One hit Bruce in the back and held him against a tree, and the other firmly grabbed Jenny by the hair and held her in place. Then they fetched out a syringe each and injected their contents into Jenny and Bruce, who both afterwards instantly began to slowly fall asleep from whatever drug they'd been injected with, and they soon blacked out completely.