System Nullification

Chapter 6

"I don't understand," Dylan complained. "We're the ones with the upper hand. We're the ones with all of the weapons. I don't understand why they don't just give up."

"They already know that you guys won't really take their lives. You're not cruel enough for that. It's a dumb gamble on their part," Sebastian stated. "But it makes sense."

Before Austin could protest, Sebastian continued. "It makes sense because they think the President and his system is fair, so we'd be fair to them too. To be honest, the reason for them blowing up the school could be simple to figure out. So they want to keep their mouths shut, just for a bit longer. Threatening them isn't going to work. As for being patient with them... that takes too long."

I sighed. This meant that all of that work was basically for nothing. Then again, sometimes, you work for nothing in this world. Sebastian said otherwise, though. "Good effort, anyway. You guys are definitely up there. Oh, and expect fifty dollars in your mailboxes soon. A hundred for Austin."

I grinned at Zephyr. "Score!" he mouthed over to me.

~

"Zephyr, after we return the money to the local bank, we have to retrieve the animals from the local shelter," I informed.

"Aw, crap, thanks a lot, Austin," Zephyr groaned. "But we can hang out with everyone after this, right?"

"If we're quick enough. I'll go start on retrieving the animals. Here," I said, shoving the bag of money towards Zephyr. "Let's split up."

"Aw, Iris, but-" Zephyr whined.

"You want to get this done quick, don't you?" I snapped. "Hurry up and get to it! I'll tell you what animals I returned so far so you know what to look out for once you return the money."

Zephyr took the other turn, and I grumbled a bit, picking up a calico cat. It felt like ever since the bank robbery, there's been a lot of troublesome crimes going around, and people part of the system had to deal with every single thing. It got to the point where all of the good teams ended up splitting up to deal with multiple things at once. It took me about half an hour for me and Zephyr to return every animal to the animal shelter, and Austin dealt with the idiot that literally let all the dogs out. "My gosh," Avery whined. "There's gotta be something behind the sudden increase in the crime rate."

"You think it could be some sort of secret organization pulling the strings?" Nora suggested.

"We can't be sure," Austin replied. "You could propose that suggestion to Sebastian, but the crimes vary too much. They range from bank robberies to letting animals out of the shelter to trespassing."

"It's really suspicious though," Charlotte said. "Even though the crimes vary and are spread around, it seems really sudden for the crime rate to go up this much."

"We might as well deal with it later," Dylan sighed. "The criminals won't talk. I just tried."

"We all tried, Dylan," Wyatt answered.

"Well, you guys can go wherever you want now," Austin said. "We did good today. I think it's good enough."

The others had really good points about the criminals. Since all of the crimes stopped, I silently hoped that I wouldn't get home only to have another task to do. "Okay, thanks," I said.

~

My day started out as complete and literal shit. The fact that I'd have to go to school later was totally a great plus. Not. I got notifications at 5:30 am from my communicator or my phone that I was tempted to ignore because I usually got random notifications on my phone for no reason. I needed my sleep, and honestly didn't care if I was mistaking my phone for my communicator since the notification alerts sound basically the same. Then I heard my dad yell, "Iris, wake up, it's the communicator!"