Lovely [The Unedited Version]

Chapter 11

“So the dining room is just over here.” Said Seraphim, pointing to a pair of nondescript wooden doors.

“Yeah, I know.”

Lovely leaned against the doors. And they waited, Seraphim bouncing on the balls of her feet. Lovely looked over at the pink haired girl and marveled at how happy and perky she could be. I could never manage that, thought Lovely and shook her head.

After about ten minutes Lovely became impatient. “Does Raven expect us to wait forever? I’m getting hungry, we should just go in.”

“You can’t go in. Raven doesn’t want you to yet- he said to wait for him. I on the other hand can go in since I’m not part of your grand ‘break into the Institute’ plan.”

“Sera!”

She laughed, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! I’ll wait with you until Raven and Rose show up.”

Just then the siblings came hurtling around the corner. Rose’s arms were full of papers and her hair was messed. She looked like she’d just gotten up from a nap. Raven on the other hand looked… normal.

“Speak of the devil and he will come.” muttered Seraphim.

“What?” asked Lovely.

“It’s an expression, it means that when you talk about the devil he will appear before you. Like when we talked about those two and they came running.”

“What about those two?” Rose said from behind Sera.

“Nothing,’ chorused the girls in unison.

Rose humphed and looked over at Raven and nodded. “Okay,” said Raven, “We’ll go in and quite everyone down and then announce. Lovely, you can do most of it.”

“Erm… Why me?”

“Because it was your idea.”

Lovely rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“Ready?” prompted Rose.

“As I’ll ever be.”

They burst into the room and immediately everyone fell silent and Seraphim hurried to take a seat next to a tall red head. Raven and Rose looked at Lovely and nodded for her to start.

“Hey.” She tried weekly, “So, um, I’m going to tell you about our plan/idea.”

“Lord- your terrible.” muttered Rose.

“We’re going to take the Institute and rescue everyone inside.”

Lovely’s statement was received with a shocked silence, then people started talking. Lovely let them talk for a bit until she could take it no more. Lovely put two fingers in her mouth and blew, sending an earsplitting whistle ricocheting around the dining hall. Quite was once again restored as the room’s inhabitants covered their ears.

“Now, we’re going to take the oldest kids here and break into the Institute and the younger kids will be helping us. The older kids will pose as experimentalists and the younger will be Dispatches. The older kids will need to meet Raven, Rose and I after this- we need to work on the make up. We’ll do all this on Monday at twelve pm.”

A boy sitting at the table closest to Lovely raised his hand. “Yes?”

“You said the older kids. Who are the older kids?”

“Thirteen and up. If your younger, but look like you could be an adult then come and see us too.” Lovely quickly amended her statement, “If you look like and act like an adult then come and see us.”

Raven stepped forward and delivered his portion of the announcement. It was mostly crap about where to go and where to meet. Then there was Rose.

“So this is the plan,” she said. Rose raised her hand and the 3D blueprints to the Institute appeared in front of her. The assembled kids gasped and Rose smirked, “The perks of being smart. Anyway, we’ll enter through the main entrance which is here,” she indicated the corresponding place on the prints, “Then we’ll go on through to the holding cells and let the others out. Lovely, Raven and I will go on to Morpheus and incapacitate him. The rest of you will work on leaving- at no cost can anyone of you be left behind. People may die, in fact it’s probable, “ Rose said this bluntly and with no affection in her voice, “But they will have to be taken with us. We can’t let any experimentalists get a hold of their bodies. Is that clear?”

A chorus of yeses echoed around the hall. Even the youngest kids had on poker faces; they all knew what death meant. They all knew how high the stakes were and they understood that they were gambling with their lives.

“Good,” said Raven stepping through Rose’s blueprints, ”Just finish dinner and then the older kids come and see us. The younger go to bed as usual. One of us will come by tomorrow to brief you and get you ready.” He smiled then, something wholly non-characteristic of him. “We’re going to succeed guys. We’re smarter than them after all.”

The kids returned to their food and the chatter gradually rose to fill the room again. There wasn’t any laughter though.  

“Are you sure about this?” asked Seraphim. She had scurried up to Lovely after Raven finished speaking.

“It has to happen sometime. We might as well be the ones doing it.”

“Lovely, you know what will happen if we get caught?”

Lovely shivered. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I do.”