𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐞

𝟏𝟎. 𝐢'𝐦...𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭?

He smiled, "Please call me Cyrus, you two can go now." he grunted, signaling he was in his normal bad mood again.

---

"That was..." Jack started while I walked down the hallway, "Hey! Char- where are you going?"

"Anywhere but here," I said wanting to leave.

"You're going to have to wait on that one,"

"And why's that?" I said while stopping to turn around and face Jack, he was holding two folders- each with our names. Those are the same from the office- "Holy crap- Jack. You took them?"

"Let's go somewhere other than the hallways, Char."

"Good idea," I agreed noticing we had attracted a good amount of attention during our conversation. 

Jack grabbed my hand and started running in the opposite direction. We passed lots of curious faces, hallways, and empty classrooms until we reached some stairs. We quickly ran up the stairs and through a door leading to a hallway with more doors on each side- dorms. There were more people here than in any of the other halls we passed through. By this time, we were getting a lot of looks, the majority being confused.

"Why'd he bring a girl-" I heard someone say while passing by, "Do you think they're going to-" the boy got interrupted by someone slapping him in the face. Serves him right for being nasty.

"Here we are," Jack said signaling to the door. He unlocked it, I counted 9 locks in total. I walked in after Jack and took in my surroundings while he placed the folders down. The area was small, plain, and almost abandoned. If it wasn't for the pictures and stationery on the desk, I would think it was. Jack opened the file with his name on it so he could see the front page. I walked over to him and peeked over his shoulder. 

Jackson Charles Whinston

Year 4

03/27, Utah

Standard Procedures before Opening

Mine must look similar. Jack quickly closed the file.

"Standard Procedures?" I asked. It was then when Jack started mumbling something to himself, and looking around the plain room, opening drawers and looking in the closet. He took something from under all the papers on his desk, identical to the files with our names on. Yet this one said, "Standard Procedures". He didn't even open it, he just left it on his bed.

"Look for bugs," It was more of a command than an answer. I started feeling under tables, the windowsill, and under the bed. When we were done we found a total of 6 bugs.

"Sorry about that, I didn't want to say anything provoking you to spill the beans." Jack said, to which I ignored, and instead sat on his bed and opened the "Standard Procedures" file. It said to look for bugs, and had a bunch of questions like, "Do you trust your partner?", and "Are you in a known location?"

"How'd you get the files from the office?" I asked.

"Grayson was looking at the one you're holding right now," I looked down at the file currently in my hands still, "he left it in the library." Jack sat in the chair next to the desk facing me.

"And the others?" I asked.

"Snagged from the office on our way out," Jack tossed me the file with my name on, which I caught and opened. The front page looked like Jack's yet with my information. I flipped to the next page, there was a good amount of black marker marks on mine, covering important information. Inside there was a picture of me, sitting under my favorite tree, in my neighborhood reading holes in fourth grade. How'd they get this?

Name- Charlotte |__________|

Age- 13

Lives- |___________________|

Biological Parents- |______________|

Adopting Parents- |_________________|

Occupation- CIA in Training

My heart dropped when I saw the words, Adopting, I'm adopted?

"What happened?" Jack said seeing the expression written on my face. He took the file from my hands and sat next to me on his bed, "Biological- Adopting? Are you-"

"Guess so- I mean I always knew I was different, kind of like I didn't belong really. Never adopted though!" I said raising my voice at the end. I felt as if my life was like a lie, why? There was a period of silence, until I spoke again, "Why do you think they crossed it out? Did they not want me to know?"

"I don't think it was that Char," Jack said while placing a hand on my shoulder. I felt my stomach churn and felt this, sort of like electricity go through my body where he touched me, and my face grew hot, I pushed this all away though, I had bigger problems than boys.

"Then what?" I said feeling my anger rise.

"It has to be for a reason. Maybe to keep your-" He hesitated, "your real parents safe, maybe a secret,"

"Is it like that for you-" I said through my clenched teeth. Jack didn't respond, "Is it?" I demanded. At this point, I was angry, almost as if you could see the steam come out of my ears. Jack looked down, removing his hand from my shoulder, then gave me a quiet "no" while fiddling with his fingers. I fell back onto the pillows of his bed so that I was looking at the ceiling, trying to calm myself down. My feelings were all mixed up, I was sad, almost as if I wanted to cry, but then I was also upset, angry really, why did nobody tell me?

"Where are they?!" I heard a familiar voice say from the hall.

"OW! Chill man-" Someone else said, by the sound of it they were getting shook back and forth, "Jackson, and the girl too- they're in there."

"Jackson-" the familiar voice said, who I now knew who it was- Max, started, "I know you're in there! Open. The. Damn. Door." Jack and I exchanged glances.

"Shut up and I'll open it!" I yelled at Max. I made my way to the door, Jack following close behind. When I opened it I saw Max, yet tired looking with a rats nest of hair, "Chipmunk and I-" he stopped to take a breath, "We- we found something-"

---

(word count: 1689)

well eheh, that's it for now! see ya next week!

hey all! It's been a while, 10 days to be exact, haha entirely my fault. Well, things are going to start to get interesting.

Thu Jan 21, 2021

heyy- so I lied, celebrating the tenth chapter of this book, I will be doing lots of revisions and editing, therefore, there won't be an eleventh chapter this weekend. I'm sorry if you were looking forward to the next chapter, It will come out later- that is a promise.

I hope to see you all soon,

~Daliah