CHAPTER 15

Chapter 15

*Jack Frost*

“We have to go after Courtney and Nidhi,” I snap. “Don’t you care about them?”

Alex, Gene, Sophia, and I are sitting at a circular table we’d found in the abandoned Town Hall, discussing possible plans of action. So far, we’re going nowhere.

“I do care about them, of course I do!” Alex says. “But we have to go carefully... otherwise, we won’t stand a chance. You saw what our enemy is capable of doing.”

Timidly, Sophia opens her mouth to speak. “I have to admit, I agree with Alex. We can’t just go charging into battle with all guns blazing. Heck, we don’t even know where they were taken. We’ve got to act, I agree, but we have to be careful how we do it.”

“Humph.” I sit back in my chair, still unsatisfied.

Gene chooses this moment to speak up for the first time. “Well, now that we’ve agreed on something, we can’t just sit here twiddling our thumbs. If we want to get information, then so be it, but whatever we do, we have to start as soon as humanly possible.”

“Amen to that,” I mutter under my breath.

Sophia frowns. “But the problem is, we don’t actually have a plan.”

“I believe I can help you all with that,” a new voice says from behind us.

We all turn to stare at the newcomer.

He’s a tall, thin, athletic-looking Indian boy with glasses and an air of authority in every movement he makes. Confident, borderline cocky.

“Who are you?” Alex questions.

“I’m Suchet. Suchet Taori.” the boy says, smirking and holding out his hand.

Alex just looks at it without taking it. “And how exactly do you think you can help us?” he says, a note of a challenge in his voice.

“Well,” Suchet says matter-of-factly, “I can make the plans for you. And I have the information you need, because unlike you, my friends and I have actually been doing things.”

Alex narrows his eyes. “Who are your friends? I’’d like to meet them.”

Suchet shrugs. “Whatever floats your boat.” Then, he turns around and calls, “Hey, guys, you can come out now!”

All around us, people -- teenagers -- surge out of various places: corners, tables, plants... it seems as if his friends can turn anything into a hiding spot. They must’ve been hiding and listening in on us for an hour, yet I’d never even noticed them.

Next to me, Alex jumps out of his chair, his jaw slack. “You... you guys are the gang kids!”

I gawk at him. The gang kids? I’d heard stories about them, and I did not want to get caught up with them. They were a notorious, vicious gang.

Suchet grins. “You got that one right.”

I observe the teenagers. There are about twelve of them, all looking to be around my age, thirteen or fourteen. I recognize three of them -- Sophie Koh, Ramya Joshi, and Dean Zhang -- from school, but the others are completely new faces.

“You need more people, strength in numbers,” Suchet continues, “and so do we. I say we set aside our rivalries and work together, just for this.”

I can see the wheels spinning in Alex’s head, weighing possible benefits against possible harms. Finally, he sighs. “We don’t really have a choice. Very well, then, I accept your offer.”

Alex and Suchet shake hands.

*Sophia Song*

I don’t recognize any of the newcomers, but as I watch, I realize they all have one thing in common. They all have that toughened, steely look in their eyes, although not all of them are brawny or well built.

Presently, Alex says, “Suchet, since we need to make a plan first, why don’t you tell all your guys to disperse, make themselves useful?”

Suchet nods. “All right, then. Dean, Saket,” he beckons to two boys standing on his left, “you two stay with me. Everyone else, find something to do. It’s time for scouting again, so have someone do that.”

The two boys, Dean and Saket, step forward.

“Nice to meet you, punks,” one says with a smirk. “I’m Dean.”

The other boy, who must be Saket, says, “Yeah, and I’m Saket.”

Alex nods towards the table. “Sit down, all of you. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

As Alex, Suchet, Saket, and Dean launch into a complex analysis of the strange occurrences that have been taking place ever since the strange storm, I zone out and observe the teenagers sitting in front of me.

Dean is taller than all of us, at least 5’ 8’’. Like me, he’s Asian, but his skin is quite tan. His black hair is long for a boy’s and he has to flick it out of his eyes every so often. He looks like a natural gang member, cool and strong and ruthless, exerting an aura of power and boldness. Dean is the kind of person who would turn heads and spotlights just by walking into a room, and he knows it.

Saket, on the other hand, is like the polar opposite of Dean. He’s Indian, with wide eyes that dart around the room; no glasses, but that doesn’t make him look any less like a nerd. He has that awkward, nervous look to him, the kind that people automatically stereotype as the geek who studies calculus during recess. However, when he speaks, anyone can instantly see the genius, the great mind sitting behind the nerdy appearance. It’s not just the clever theories he comes up with. It’s something about the way he talks, the quiet intelligence he exerts with every word.

Gene interrupts my thoughts. “What do you think, Sophia?”

“Huh?” I look up, bewildered.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Were you even listening to anything?”

“Uh...” I let my voice trail off, embarrassed.

Saket says, “My theory is that whoever escaped from the Cosmo Prison sent the weird mystery boy to find and steal the key, which means that his master has some sort of vault where they’re keeping the key. The key must be more important than anyone realized, since they want it so badly.

“On the subject of the key, I think I’ve figured out its strange abilities. Gene picked it up, and you thought he disappeared and reappeared immediately at the wall behind you, but Gene said he was walking around and feeling sick before he reached the wall. So that means there was a gap. In terms of time.”

I lean closer, interested. “So what does that mean?”

“It means the key can stop time,” Saket replies.

*Alex Peng*

Just as the words leave Saket’s throat, two of the gang kids, a boy and a girl, come streaking in through the door.

Suchet’s eyes go wide with surprise. “Michael? Ramya? What...?”

“Suchet!” the girl, who has to be Ramya, gasps out. “Sophie and Richard are back.”

“So?” Suchet asks impatiently.

“They’re not alone,” the boy, Michael, adds.

Suchet shoots out of his chair, casts a look at the rest of us, and says, “Better go take a look.”

He sprints off.

Sophia, Gene, Jack, and I run after him. That kid runs crazy fast; it’s all I can do to keep up.

Finally, he skids to a stop at the edge of Town Square. I catch up with him, panting, but I completely forget about my tired legs when I see the six people in the middle of the square.

It’s Courtney, Nidhi, and four other teenagers who I don’t recognize.

I run to Nidhi, shouting, “Nidhi, God dangit, what happened?”

She doubles over as she tries to catch her breath. “Long... story... tell later...”

“It’s okay,” I say, seeing how tired she is. She looks like she’s been running for a long time; her face is streaked with sweat.

“Better come to Town Hall with us,” Gene says to Courtney and the others. They nod and follow him through the deserted streets of our city.

By the time we get back to Town Hall, the six of them have mostly recovered and are able to tell us the events that led them back here.

After exchanging stories and theories, a small Asian girl whose name I learn to be Debbie says, "I think it's pretty clear that we have to go get the key back."

The boy holding her hand, Leo, adds on, "It's the only way to close the Cosmo Prison again."

"We should send scouts first," Saket offers. "That's worked in the past." He goes on to elaborate on the findings of the gang scouts, "Apparently the kingpin here is a girl called Christy, and she has two lieutenants, Sid and Rachel. They guard the key all the time. They've set up a fortress not far from here; our scouts can reach it within an hour. Apart from the three of them, there aren’t many other guards, so getting in wouldn’t be all that difficult. The hard part would be getting past Rachel, Sid, and Christy, since they all seem to have some sort of supernatural abilities.”

“Yeah,” Leo says. “Rachel has some weird shadow-melting, water-freezing ability, and Christy can make powerful beams of light. We don’t know about Sid, though.”

“Sid can shift the earth,” Saket explains. “And don’t forget about the strange weather; I think we can infer that one of them has that power.”

“But the question is, how can we possibly hope to combat these people if they can do this kind of thing?” Debbie asks uncertainly.

Dean, who’s been silent all this time, speaks up now. “Manpower.”

We all turn to look at him as he continues, “They’ve got all those wacko skills and stuff, but they don’t have many people. You know what a Zerg rush is?”

We all nod. Being a gamer, I’m familiar with the term: swarming a player with a huge number of weak opponents. Any one of them is easy to defeat; the real threat is that their sheer numbers are simply overwhelming.

I motion for Dean to continue, interested in his idea now.

“We’ve got the numbers,” he says. “We have at least thirty people, and if we find more survivors, we’d have even more. We have only three enemies, and they’re not completely undefeatable. If we can overwhelm them with our strength in numbers, we’d be able to beat them.”

My knee jumps up and down impatiently. “So, we have our plan now. What’re we waiting for?”

Dean’s intense gaze burns into mine.

“The problem is that in a Zerg rush... well, most of the Zergs have to die.”