Whatever It Takes

~ 8 ~

Meanwhile back at the Market -
Third Person POV
Olly heard all the commotion that had just happened. He ran over to see what was wrong. "Omigod! He ran over to Boiko, "Boss, what happened?!" His cute accent had disappeared, and turned into a rough Bulgarian one.

He tried to peel the spiderweb from his hand without nearly shooting the gun, "What happened? Really?! What happened to you telling us whether or not they were superheroes?!"

"I didn't know," he surrendered. "I really didn't. They looked normal, I swear. Please don't fire me."

"Oh I'm not going to do that," he rolled his eyes. "If you want to keep your job, find them. First get us to AOPI, then find them. I don't know where they are. But I did put a tracker on the wizard, so we can find them once we get to the building. Got it?"

"Got it, boss!" He saluted.

"Good, now get my comrade up and let's head to the jet. We can't waste time," Boiko answered.

Olly turned to help Asen up, but she was up and holding out her hand for him. "How?" Olly asked.

She took out a knife. Not a regular knife though. It was a curved, multicolored knife. She put it away, "Come on. We can't wait." She grabbed his hand and yanked him from the ground.

Back to the other three -
Thea's POV
I stood there. Mouth ajar. Trying to hold back any possible emotion I could have besides astonishment. He shut out my only possible way to find my father! He knows that's all I wanted out of this trip! Why the hell?!

I turned to him, "Open the portal."

"No."

"Strange, open the portal," I turned back to gazing into the vast of a desert.

"I can't."

"Bullshit," I turned to him. "I know you can." We stared at each other for a little bit. As Peter was about to step in I spoke up, "They were our chance."

Strange just stared at me in response.

"Do you hear what I'm saying?!" Tears threatened my eyes, "We could've found him so easily! Now we nearly back to square one!"

"Morgan," Peter tried to soothe me with that fake name which I've hated since I arrived.

"How many days do we have left?" I asked.

"Three days."

I heard that three and I felt my heart stop beating in one second. I suddenly couldn't breath, and it nearly felt like I was choking. I pat my chest and gasped. It was like I was drowning. I stepped backwards to try and catch myself on something. Then I realized that we were in the desert.

I fell backwards and landed on my butt still gasping for air. My eyes became watery, and things were getting blurred. I saw a figure come and try to shush me and get me calmed. It was Peter's voice, so I assumed he was trying to help me.

"Hey, hey. Hey. Morgan! Morgan listen to me. You're okay."

At this point, I probably looked like a big baby.

"Hey, breath with me. Ready," he was trying to calm me. He began to do breathing exercises. Slowly breathing in and out. I tried to follow his breathing. Soon enough I was able to calm down and I was semi-stable again.

"What was that?" He asked.

"It was an anxiety attack," Strange answered for me.

I wiped my tears off my cheeks and stood up. "I'm okay. I am. I just need to walk it off. It happens sometimes."

"Th-" Strange stopped himself, "Morgan, there's still something that we can look for. You saw it because we have talked about it. AOPI."

"I don't know what that is, and I can't read any of the books here. They all have different languages and I can't read any of them. I highly doubt they'd have any in the USA."

"I never said we had to go to the United States to find English books."

•••

"Where are we again?" 

"Birmingham, West Midlands, England."

"Woah," Peter's eyes were as wide as the Big Ben.

"So this is the largest library in the UK," Strange nodded. Both of the boys walked past me while I just gawked. This is the only thing I ever wanted. A huge ass library!

"So you coming, Morgan?" Peter called.

I nodded and followed after them. I noticed something shiny on Strange's shirt, "Wait, Strange, hold on. I see something on you."

"What is it?" He stopped.

"I got it," I stood on my tiptoes and plucked it off him. It looked like the mix between a beetle and a mechanical button. "What the hell?"

"Let me see," Strange held out his hand. I set it in his palm. He examined it, and told me, "Tracker."

"A tracker? Then we have to get rid of it. They could find us-"

"No, we don't destroy it. Not yet. Something bad could happen and they could find us easier. Haven't you two seen movies?" Peter told us.

"Movies aren't real life," I rolled my eyes.

"Speak for yourself," Peter chuckled. "I say we don't destroy it."

"Peter is right," Strange nodded. "We can't destroy it. We might be able to track them from this if we can't find anything."

"Fine, let's go see what we can find." We all went inside. It was so quiet and peaceful.  Now this is what you call heaven.

We all separated. I went looking through the history section, Peter went through the nonfiction stuff, and Strange went to the foreign language section.

World history, no. Why we had the Cold War? Nope. Secret Organizations starting from the Revolutionary War? ABSOLUTELY!

I grabbed it from off the shelf. I went over and sat down at a nearby table. I looked around for the boys, Eh, they'll find me.

I opened up the book. Sadly, there was no contents page so I had to go through the index or entire back. I decided to go through the entire thing and see if I can find anything else. I heard a book get set down next to me, "Hey, I found something that could help."

I didn't remove my eyes from the pages, "Same." I looked through. My eyes lit up, "Found it!"

"Found A-"

"Shh!" I shushed Peter.

"What happened?" Strange came and sat across from us.

"Sh! I found it!" I said. "'AOPI, Aggressive Oppression from and to the People Institution, was made during World War II. The USSR has made an institution based on profit and other stuff. Depending on how much money was brought it decided how bad oppression had gotten. The more money the less it was. The lowest money recorded was seventeen dollars. The highest money was...."

"Was what?"

"Seven billion dollars," I was astonished. "When oppression was high they often did things to bring it back up; that would include anything it takes. The average would be about five-hundred-thousand. The AOPI hasn't been active since 1920s as people know of."

"When was that book made?"

"2004."

"That's a long ass-"

Crash!