Academy of Secrets (original version)

Energy Radar

W

e poured inside the office, panting and stumbling over chairs. After descending down to the H-chamber, we found TJ and Carmen sitting at the table, pouring over a piece of gel-paper. TJ looked up and widened his eyes.

“Did you get anything?” Carmen said.

“Nothing!”

I half-expected Reevus to spew venom at her with such a nasty tone, but my body still buzzed with adrenaline after the chase so I didn’t really care too much. I bombarded TJ with what happened after he left. Of course, I was talking so fast it was a miracle he understood me at all.

“Holy hell! It sounds like a freaking action movie! I got more visions by the way. We were writing down what I saw, but it still doesn’t make that much sense. I mean really, what’s the point of having these visions if they don’t help us out with anything?”

TJ spread his arms towards the piece of gel-paper on the table. Tami wandered by, red-faced, pacing and shaking her hands. Then she started fanning herself.

“I can’t breathe right now! That was—whoa that was way too much for one day.”

“Tell me about it! I thought they were gonna catch us and make us test subjects. Wait…does that make us fugitives?” said Drake.

He glanced at a twitchy Reevus for an answer.

“You can’t be a fugitive from someone who’s also breaking the law. All of you realize we got nothing right? Absolutely nothing!”

Reevus kicked the table in a very un-Reevus-like way and plunked himself down in a seat. His fists curled in his hair.

“That scientist probably set off the alarm in the first place!”

Reevus stared directly at me when he said this. I gritted my teeth.

“Oh there’s no way in hell you’re putting this on me! You’re the one who calculated the drug wrong! If I had woken up just a little bit earlier, I could’ve gotten out of there without hitting the guy.”

“What made you think hitting him was the solution?”

I came this close to flipping the table. Was he serious? Oh something went wrong, let’s blame Ali! I rushed forward and slammed my hands on the table.

“You mess up so it’s magically my fault? Sorry, I’ll just stand there and let him capture me next time. Or maybe I’ll knock him out and tie him up with something I pull out of my ass!”

“Guys, seriously!”

Tami came between us, pulling me away from the table by my shoulder.

“Look, we know the lab exists now and we still have Selveena’s storage disk. And we were running around there for a while; we can’t just have absolutely nothing. Did you guys see anything at all?”

“I saw a guy getting injected with stuff,” I said.

“So did I,” Drake said, “and the test subjects were pretty varied. There were all kinds of aliens in there.”

“Creating super-soldiers maybe?” said TJ.

“I don’t know,” said Reevus rubbing his head, “I’ll have to re-look at some of the files Selveena gave us. Did you see anything new in the visions?”

TJ picked up the piece of gel-paper, which he read aloud.

“Okay, so I didn’t see any glowie balls—shut up Ali—this time. Just a lotta green lightning and destruction. Oh, and a creepy little boy.”