The Ultimate Rescue

Chapter II

LUKE

Music: Departure for Space from Gradius III SNES

Sam's mom's car pulls up in front of my mom's house. My bus really sucks; there's so many annoying people on the bus and I'm very late into the route on the way home. My parents work during the school day, so they're unable to drive me, and I don't have any older siblings to drive me. Sam's mom was off of work today, so she was planning on giving him a ride home anyways. Sam actually offered to take me home as well, so here we are.

"Hey, thanks for the ride offer, man," I tell Sam as I hop out of the car.

"No problem," Sam replies. "Hey, you gonna come to movie night tomorrow night?"

I stop as I ponder how to answer his question. I don't want to reveal too much to him about what I've been spending my time with over the past few weeks. "Sorry, man. I can't," I decide on. Simple answers usually are enough to get by.

But with Sam, that's not always the case. "Luke, this is the third week in a row that you've skipped out on movie night. Is something going on?"

"I've been busy," I tell him, looking him in the eye to convey that I am telling the truth.

"With what?"

"Does it really matter?"

I somehow call Sam's bluff with this, because he puts both of his hands up and says, "Alright, alright. You're right; it's probably personal and I shouldn't be asking about it."

"I've just had some family obligations to deal with, plus I've been slammed with homework," I explain. While the family obligations aren't really true, I have been slammed with homework for the past several weekends. That's not the whole story, though.

"That's fair."

"Besides, aren't Mia and Shanna picking the movie this week?"

"True." Sam laughs to himself, and I give a few half-hearted chuckles myself.

"Alright, have a good one. Tell Avery I said that the offer to start a relationship with me still stands."

"...yeah, I'm not going to do that. See ya." Sam shuts his car door, and his mom drives away. I wait until Sam's out of viewing range to go inside my house. The rest of my siblings are all isolated in their rooms, and both of my parents are out, so for the time being, I have some time to myself.

I walk into my room, and shut the door quietly behind me. Then, I walk over to a family photo hanging next to my bedroom window and pull it off, revealing a keypad. I enter the combination to open up an elevator that leads to my secret room. Originally, I used this room primarily for research on Earl Gibson, a clever convict who caused the accident that gave me the prosthetics on my right arm and left leg. Since his downfall, I've expanded the room, both literally and in terms of what I use it for.

Music: Interlude from Super Mario Galaxy

After taking the elevator down to the Earl Gibson room, I make my way to the other side of the room and open another door, which takes me to an even smaller office room. I shut the door behind me, set my backpack against the door, and take a seat at my black desk. I open one of the desk drawers and pull out my laptop, which I use to open up a program I created two months ago. The program automatically pulls up to a map, showing the Americas, Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean space between the continents.

So, what does this program do, you ask? It tracks down signs of activity from beings outside of our realm, relative to our own dimension. And right now, there's clusters of red dots all over the midwestern portion of the United States, a few in Canada, and some in northern Africa. As you'd probably expect, the bigger the cluster of dots, the higher the activity.