P L A N B E T A

Chapter Five

July 5th, 2042

Cullen

"No, Mom. What do you there's a threat letter?" I ask, following my mom around the house as she packs up a few things.

"Jack Peter Cullen just go pack up your stuff, we're going into lockdown we need to leave!" she snaps and turns to me, exhales, and says "Please. And make sure Gwen gets her stuff together, too." I accept the command and run upstairs to finish packing my things. I pack only what I need, clothes, toiletries, and then some sentimental photos from when all of us were little.

When I go check up on Gwen she only has certain toys packed. I then remind her that in order for her to be as left brained as it takes to be mentally trained, she has to pack what's logical, and what she needs, not what she wants. However, she then reminds me that me telling her to only focus on logic is something that a robot would do and I'm giving in to something my mother told me to never fall for when I was little.

"You're being a smartass," I groan and go to her dresser to pick out clothing for her.

"You're not allowed to use those words in front of me, 'member? I'll tell Mom and you won't be able to hang out with Maia alone anymore," she sasses. I furrow my brows and look down at her.

"As of tonight we're all living in the same place, so I can do whatever I please."

"Nu-uh," she argues. "If mommy or anyone else found out they'd terminate you permanently. Now say sorry for saying that in front of me and go get me a cookie," she demands. I drop her clothes into her suitcase and moderately jog downstairs to get her a cookie and a glass of orange juice, she was ten, and one of the smartest children on the planet, but she was one who held onto their past well into their teens, and I didn't see how that would change anytime soon.

By the time I had gotten back upstairs, she had her bag properly packed and she had another, a larger bag full of toys. I handed her the cookie and the glass of orange juice and watched as she practically swallowed the entire thing whole.

She looks up at me with a little bit of chocolate on her face and smiles. I take the hem of my shirt and wipe her mouth to be free of chocolate. Gwen hops onto her bed and pulls my arm so I'll sit down with her. "Is everything going to be alright, P?" she asks. "Like are we going to come back home and live normally again after we come back? All of us?"

"Yes, Gwen. All of us are going to come back and be perfectly healthy and okay," I assure.

"You promise?" She asks.

"I promise, Gwen," I reassure. She hugs me and I hug her back, taking in this moment and realizing how much I actually love the little devil. She squeezes me tighter and then let's go, sighing and smiling at me.

I rough up her hair and our mother calls us down to the living room because it is time to go and we have to put the house on lockdown mode. The car that we know well seems dark and violent. The setting sun that is normally calming is now shining in my eyes and blinding me so I can't see more than two inches ahead of my nose. My eyes are pulled over to Gwen, I see small, clear tears running down her face and she was squeezing the pillow that she brought with her.

I rest my hand on her shoulder and she looks over at me, trying to quickly clear her tears before I notice, but it's too late. The sun seems to beam off of her bleach blonde hair and I can nearly see through her eyes. "P," she says. "I feel like this isn't gonna work out how we want it to."

"How so?" I ask, nearly whispering.

"I dunno, I just don't feel good about it," she explains and tucks the pillow in between herself and the car door, she then lays her head on it and falls asleep almost instantly.

The GZU building is packed when we get there. Officials are getting checked by officers and officers are getting checked by other officers. Everyone has a finger pointed at someone accusing them of something. It's not until minutes later that I see Arabella and her siblings sitting against one of the outside walls waiting for further instruction. Gwen and I walk over to them, Gwen sits by Ashlynn and I sit by Arabella.

"Y'know," Jameson starts. "I was having such a good time being a newly thirteen-year-old, and then we get hit with this, what kind of universe are we living in?" I chuckle to myself and rest the back of my head on the wall behind me. "What, Jack Peter? I'm serious! When you turned thirteen you didn't have to go through this, none of you did," he complains.

"When I was thirteen I had to go to the hardest training I had ever been to because Plan Beta was about to be announced and I had like no time to prepare, now I'm used to the challenges," I explain to him.

Arabella chimes in, "Jameson Eugene Baker-Crane, when I turned thirteen I was thrown out of a plane for my training, no parachute, only beta technology that Jack Peter programmed and it was a fifty-fifty chance that I'd survive. You didn't talk to us all day, you just hit up a bunch of guys that are not interested and got a new haircut because oh my goodness, you're a teenager now." Ashlynn and Gwen break out laughing and I start to as well. Jameson scowls at me and I can't help but laugh more.

Then, I see Maia out of the corner of my eye, she walks over to us with her three siblings and they sit across from us. Maia keeps Paisley under her arm and extremely close to her, she says nothing. It is more unlike Maia to not say anything to me than it is for her to turn into a zebra and have her stripes melt off, revealing the real color of a zebra.

In fact, none of them are speaking, they are all just looking down and they all sort of look like messes.

"What happened to you guys?" asks Ashlynn.

"You know that kid that we were thinking about adopting, Rowan?" Orren says. We all nod. The Wagner family already had four kids, but they were never ones to turn down the opportunity of giving a child a home. "Well as soon as we were leaving, we heard that the orphanage was attacked, supposedly by the same people that came here. Rowan's gone, all of them are. They didn't deserve it," Orren says, his voice cracking every other word, he's trying to keep in tears. My jaw drops an inch or two and I can see the hurt in all of their eyes, especially Maia's and Maxwell's.

I had been having frequent meetings every Wednesday with Maia so I could train her to do the things that she wanted to do, every Wednesday she was so excited to learn something new. I had a feeling that this Wednesday would be very different.

Maia's parents come and look at us all, they share the same look of hurt and sadness in their eyes, but they've always been better at hiding it. "Okay kids, come on, be quick, but your stuff in your rooms. Maia and Arabella, you're sharing. Gwen and Ashlynn, you too. Jack Peter, Orren, and Maxwell, you're in the biggest room, got it? After you throw your stuff up there, come down to the mailroom, oh, and put on your uniforms, welcome to your first day of Plan Beta," Maia's dad says, and then he walks away.

We all race up to our rooms. Maxwell, Orren and I are falling every two seconds trying to get our black, leather pants on. We throw on our white shirts and black slick jackets with the GZU logo on the right shoulder area. We then book it down to the Mailroom and catch up with the rest of them. There were electrical lasers around the perimeter of the scene that would electrocute anyone who attempted to cross.

Shannon stepped forward and put her thumb on the top of one of the stability poles. The lasers disappeared and we all got a good look at the letter that laid in the middle. She beckoned me into the square and pointed down, telling me not to touch it, but to figure out if the evidence had fingerprints on it.

I crouched and took a good look at the letter. We may have not been able to succeed last time, but we are bigger, stronger, and faster than you now. More than you will ever be, it read. I take a pocket-sized blacklight from my belt and shined it over the small paper, there were many of the same fingerprints, which made me believe that these people were either idiots or extreme geniuses. I looked around at all of them who were staring at me intensely. "Got any powder?" I ask. "Like baby powder or really any kind of powder?" I ask. Most of them shake their head, but then Maia smiles and reaches into her pocket, then taking out a small vial of makeup powder. She hands it to me and I get back to work, I lightly tap the powder onto the paper, then use the vial to hold it down as I blow off the excess. Handing the vial back to Maia, I unclip my fingerprint detector and shine it over the note. The device takes a few seconds to read, but then it finally registers.

"Toby Alva," I say. "Who the heck is that?"