P L A N B E T A

Chapter Twenty-One

November 28th, 2042

Wagner

Ara is wide awake which is kind of scary for me. How could she get absolutely no sleep but still be ready to go into a full-fledged war? I look out of the window and smile. The view is amazing, but my eyes are still pulled back up to the sky. I wonder if he's up there saying what I say to him in my head. I wonder if Jack Peter Cullen is doing okay. But I also wonder what he does.

About halfway through the ride my phone buzzes in my pocket. There's a text from my grandad. Sweetie, we love you. Have a safe time traveling. We knew you couldn't stay here forever, and your parents know that you're on your way. A huge weight feels like it's being lifted off of my shoulders and I sigh in relief. I tell Arabella and at first, she tenses up, but then she seems to relax too, a little more than she thought she would. Her eyes closed and she seems to drift off for a second before coming back to reality.

"Ara we still have time, you can get some sleep it's okay, I can hold myself and you," I try to pursue.

"No," she says. "No I have to stay awake, it'll mess up my schedule if I don't—"

"I don't care about your schedule, Ara. You need sleep and that's that. Now sleep, believe in me, please," I say. This was the one and only time that I would ever use what I learned with manipulation on one of my friends. I didn't want to, but I knew that if Ara got no sleep, she wouldn't be able to fight off the bad people that we need to.

She sighs and brings out her phone and earbuds, she pops them in and lays her head on the window. I pop in my earbuds as well and get out a tablet of paper and a pencil. I start to draw, creating structures of a person's face but focusing on the eyes. I don't even start to draw hair, I go write to shading the eyes with color. I mean to choose a brown, but I pull out a bright blue, and that's when I found out I was drawing Jack Peter.

I wasn't surprised, but I didn't know why that was the color that my hand drifted to. However, I went with it. I continued to draw him, but then realized I was beginning to forget his face, which dug a black starring dagger into my heart. I'm not even finished, but an image pops into my mind and I have to write it down. My pencil glides along the paper smoothly as a start to draw a J from the curve. Where the top line normally goes, I swirl it and drag the line across, then swirling it around one more time but as though it is mirroring the other. However, instead of a curve at the bottom to make it another J, it is now a P. I look at for a solid second and then recognize it. "J.P," I say to myself. It was his signature, and I completely forgot about it.

Hot tears run down my face but I don't realize that either. I'm just sitting there being a mess yet still continuing to draw a boy I missed so much. Jack Peter was that boy who would sit outside of his first-period class until it started on his phone. If Ara and I weren't impulsive and in love with him in one way or another, he might still be like that. I was glad he wasn't though.

My tears hit the paper and I looked back up the sky, imagining him up there looking right back down. This whole thing had felt like someone was ripping my rest apart like paper, poking holes in my stomach, gagging me with the sharp end of a knife and choking me with rough hands. My throat feels like it's closing and I go into a cold sweat. I turn up my music to drown out my thoughts but my mind doesn't stop. It continues going full speed which makes me extremely dizzy.

An old man walks up to me with a blank face. He has issues, but there are no emotions in his eyes. I slap his hip and he drops the box of tissues, he then melts. There are more gasps from people on the train but I ignore them. There is another metal contained within the android, I pull it out and flinch from how excruciatingly hot it is. I wait a bit and then pick it back up, undo the lid, and look inside. There are another letter and another object at the bottom. Even though Arabella is asleep I read the letter, because as I know it, you can always reread a letter on paper.

Oh, he misses you. Enjoy! —ACA, it reads. My dizziness continues and I'm not sure what's going on around me. I take out the object, it's a small golden guppy charm attached to a thin gold chain. I run my fingers over it looking for some sort of camera or recorder. I inspect the chain to make sure it can't tighten and choke me. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just a simple necklace.

I am tempted to put it on but then remember that it's evidence that I am already tampering with. I sit for a second before putting the necklace back into the thermos. I wonder how ACA grew so much technology and intelligence wise in secret. We thought that they had vanished, but in reality, they were right by us the entire time, waiting to pounce on us, and they succeeded.

Right as I calm down, I have another person come up to me. "Hey miss, I'm sorry to bother you, really am, but there's something that someone was going to give you and I can't find them, so here..." this person actually had emotion and worry in their eyes.

Before taking it I ask, "You're not an android, right?" He shakes his head. "Can I look at your hips, I know that sounds weird but I have to ask that before I can accept anything." He lifts up the back of the shirt to show no power buttons. "Do you work for an ah-ca?" I ask. In GZU we always called ACA ah-ca. Members of ACA knew this and took the name themselves. They were like the Patriots to the British, but the British were keeping the world safe in this case.

"What's ah-ca?" he asks, looking genuinely confused.

I sigh and hold out my hand. "I have nothing to lose, just hand it over. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm just really over these past twelve hours haven't been the best." He smiles sympathetically and then walks away. I open the box but gasp as soon as I see what it is. A small, dead fish lays in a small cardboard box. I put the lid back on and put the box in my lap, taking my hands off.

A moment goes by where I do nothing with the box, but then I pick it back up, open the lid, turn the box over so the fish falls into the lid, and find another letter beneath the fish.

Only you can decode it, Maia, only you know how. And if you want to get him back, you're going to have to make a sacrifice. Not a life, but your information, and if you don't, the pod explodes, and he dies. But in case you don't want to give over any information, there's a lovely video for you inside of the fish. —ACA

I raise a brow, put the letter into the thermoses, and then look at the fish. I slip my hand into the bottom of my shirt and touch the fish, the inside seems to be rock solid but only in certain areas. I put my other hand in the bottom of my shirt as well and squish the fish until I can see something poking out of the flesh. My tears start up again but this time I feel as though I'm about to vomit.

Once the thing is out, I examine it. I mess around it using the covered hands until I realize that it was a flash drive that could plug into the charging port on my phone. I do so, and see a video in only a grayscale play a video.

Jack Peter stands looking out of a small window in the pod. I pop back in my earbuds to hear whatever he's saying. "Maia I miss you," He says. "If you're in trouble, if anything tries to hurt you, I'm going to beat it if—when—I get back down there. Nothing's gonna keep me from you anymore, that's a promise." The video ends. It was short, but sweet, and also painful.

The little guppy has no sense of direction or what anything is anymore. She used to wander cautiously with not a fear in mind. But now she was lost with no place to wander.