Spy School: Why did you leave me? [EDITING]

[Chapter 19]

"Fine," he mumbled. I smirked.

"Okay, it's 5:55, so let's go to Natalya's room," I said. Mike nodded. We walked out the door and towards Natalya's room. Two minutes later, we arrived. Mike knocked, and Zoe opened it.

"Morning," she said in her usual cheerful voice. We greeted her. Natalya looked fine, but something was wrong with Erica. She had this dark aura radiating off her, which screamed 'don't talk to me'. I looked at Zoe again. She shook her head. I nodded.

"Okay, listen up," Natalya started, but was interrupted by a phone call. She took one look at the Caller ID, and her face darkened.

"Oh no. This can't be good," Natalya said, picking up the phone. The voice at the other end spoke to her quickly, but the person must have said something important because Natalya's eyes widened. She ended the call quickly.

"Come with me," she said urgently. We followed her. We walked through a few rooms until we approached a wall.

"That's the support pillar that holds the room up," I said.

"Just walk through," Natalya said. Zoe went first. She approached the pillar and tried to a few bricks, but she couldn't. Her hand went right through. Her eyes widened.

"An illusion," Zoe said. Natalya nodded. Zoe walked through the illusion. Then Mike. Then Erica. Then it was my turn. Right before I walked through, I turned towards Natalya.

"Why do my instincts tell me you got this idea from Platform 9 and 3/4?" I asked. Then I walked through. I'm not sure, but I think I might have heard Natalya chuckle. After I walked through, I appeared in a room with computers. It had computers and T.V screens everywhere. There were lines of chairs that were left empty, but the three middle seats in the top row were occupied. My jaw dropped when I saw who occupied them. It was Chip, Jawa, and Cyrus. Chip looked briefly up from his screen.

"Hey Ben," Chip said.

"What?" I said.

"Cyrus will explain," Jawa said, not looking up from his screen. Natalya walked up behind me.

"Sit down. I will explain everything. But quickly," Natalya said. We all scrambled for a seat.

"We thought Spyder was going to use a bomb of high power to melt the ice of Antarctica. But we ran the calculations, and that wouldn't work. The blast would break apart the ice, but not melt it. Then we found this," Natalya said, pointing towards a huge pillar that was pointed sideways.

"What's that?" I asked.

"That's a laser. It's a highly concentrated heat wave that is so hot it'll melt literally anything," Natalya said.

"But will it be able to maintain the heat for such a long distance?" Mike asked.

"Good question. The normal answer is no, but with a small bomb it could increase the speed of the laser, giving it potential to retain all the heat," Natalya said.

"So the bomb won't hurt anyone," Mike said.

"By small I mean it'll only blow up everything within a 5-mile radius," Natalya said. The color drained from Mike's face.

"Wait, what?" I said, having the same reaction as Mike.

"Despite how small it is, it's still a bomb," Zoe reminded us. We nodded.

"So instead of going away from the bomb, we're going closer to the bomb?" Mike asked, freaked out.

"It's a risk we have to take," Natalya said.

"When do we leave?" Jessica asked.

"Well, the bomb is scheduled to blow up at 10 o'clock sharp, it's a 1-hour hike to the top of the mountain, and 30 minutes to walk to the pit of it, it takes 2 hours to get there, so were should be there by 6:30. To be safe we'll leave at 6:15, which is in 10 minutes," Natalya said.

"Where exactly do we have to go?" I asked. Natalya smiled.

"We have to go to the Nova Iguaçu Volcano," Natalya said, talking about it as if it was a toy and not a highly dangerous volcano.

"We're going inside of a volcano?" Zoe asked, concerned.

"Don't worry, it hasn't been active for more than a million years," Natalya assured. Zoe nodded, but still seemed skeptical.

"Are Chip, Jawa, and Cyrus coming too?" Erica asked. I jumped. I had almost forgotten she was there.

"No. They will monitor from here. There's one last thing. Our CIA Satellite Cameras picked up this image at 0200 Hours today. We enlarged and tried to make it more clear, but this is the farthest it could go. Can you see who is in the photos?" Natalya asked, shoving a slightly blurry image into my hand. Natalya was right. It was a bit blurry, but you could make out the people in the pictures. The pictures were of Jessica, Erica, and I.

"Do you know where these were taken?" Cyrus asked.

"The statue," we all said at once. Cyrus nodded.

"That's all," Cyrus said, looking back at his computer.

"Well, it's a 2-hour drive, so we should get going," Mike said. We all nodded. We walked back into the room, across the hallway, in the elevator, out the hotel door. As we did, an SUV pulled up that was similar to the one we rode on the way here.

"This brings back memories," Mike said as he hopped in the back seat.

"Can we go slower this time?" Mike pleaded.

"One speed only," Natalya said, stepping on the pedal. Although the drive was 2 hours, in a way we got lucky. There were no Spyder attacks, traffic jams, or accidents. At 8 o'clock sharp, we arrived at the foot of the volcano. We all got out of the car.

"What a sight," Jessica said. I nodded. We began to hike the mountain. Because the volcano had been inactive for so long, there was vegetation growing on the sides as we hiked up. 1 hour later, we finally reached the top

"Oh....finally....we....made it!" I said, out of breath.

"Shame you came all this way just for it to end here," said the voice of my nightmares. I looked up, and in front of me there were 100 Spyder Agents, all dressed in black and armed, their guns pointed at all of us. And in front of them, all was Mr. E, a look of triumph on his face, and his gun pointed directly at my heart.

Is this how it ends? Did we come this far just to fail? Is it all over?

Then someone spoke.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

- Cookie