Chapter 7 Part 1

This is one of my favorite chapters partly because we learn so much about the characters and partly because it marks the end of a very hard-to-write chapter. I hope you like it!

Chapter Seven

The Essentials  

The second we had crossed out the doorway to the building Collin and Drew broke into a run. I tried to catch up but they were much faster.

Finally I called after them “wait up!”

Collin slowed but Drew turned the corner before stopping.

“Why are we running? She won’t know what we did until…” The sound of a siren stopped me mid sentence.

“Till that?” Asked Sam. Without discussing it any further we all started running.

I’ve never been one for sports or dance very much, so I had very little stamina for the hard run and soon had to call for Collin to stop.

“I think we’re good now,” he said only slightly out of breath.

“Did you get it?” I asked panting heavily.

Drew smiled and pulled out the copper bag withdrawing the small crystal from it.

“One down seven to go!” said Sam enthusiastically.

Collin scowled at him “did you do the math all by yourself?”

“I’m twelve not five,” he snapped back.

“Well pewee, you don’t look it.”

Drew cut across them before Sam could reply, “stop it you two. We’re a team and if you two keep fighting all the time we’re not going to function as one.”

Sam glared at everyone. I could tell it would take more time before Collin and Sam got along so I broke the silence.

“So, what happened?”

“Nothing really,” said Collin “once you left the room we just smashed the case and grabbed it.” He shrugged “I just wish we’d have gotten away without anyone finding out. It was a janitor; he came just as we were leaving. He probably didn’t see the mess until we had already left.”

“Do you realize what this means?” I asked the full impact of it hitting me.

“Yea, it means we’re that much closer to reassembling the heaven’s gem.”

I shook my head “don’t you get it, we’re criminals. That girl could give full details of our appearances to the police. She might even have caught our names. Even if we survive this mission, we’re going to be in serious trouble.”

Sam and Drew both looked disconcerted and worried, but Collin only shrugged. “Sometimes it’s worth it, but don’t worry so much. Remember I’ve done this before. There are a lot of risks you have to take but it has to be done. We can’t let Feren win.” We were all silent.

I nodded “Then, what’s next?”

I had to admire Sam’s ability with the pulse finder, no matter how much he gloated about his own skills or Collin’s dislike of him. We soon determined the next shard was located somewhere in southern California.

“How are we supposed to get there?” I asked, “I don’t think we can take the school van.”

Collin dug through his backpack “aha,” he said pulling out seven airplane tickets. There was no time, date, destination or airline on it.

“Round trip flight anywhere we want to go,” he said happily.

“I didn’t know you could get those,” I said thoughtfully.

“You probably can’t but the Academy has all kinds of connections.”

“So we just go the airport and keep moving?”

“What else would we do?” Asked Drew.

I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.

“So how do we get there mister team leader,” said Sam sarcastically to Collin.

“Pipe down pipsqueak,” said Collin distractedly.

He had once again pulled out his smart phone and was looking up directions to the nearest airport.

“Darn, we’ll have to take a bus,” he said frowning and tapping his phone again.

It wasn’t any trouble locating a bus stop and seven stops later we were at the airport. “Security is going to be a problem,” said Drew, “how are we going to get all our gadgets through.”

Collin went through all our gadgets, “the only things that might be a problem is my communicator and Drew’s carrier. It’s already got part of the heaven’s gem in it, who knows what kind of reading it’ll get on their scanners. We’ll also need to take out our Bluetooth communicators.”

We pulled out our earpieces and put them in Collin’s backpack.

We debated sever possibilities of getting our things through without detection but I couldn’t see how any of our ideas would work unless we were planning on a fully-fledged ‘attack and dash’ as Collin put it. But we were in an airport, top security; we all knew there was no way we’d get away with it.

“Alright, I think I have an idea,” said Drew retrieving the crystal out of the bag. “We’ll have to take a gamble on the communicator.” She began rummaging through her backpack and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Trust Yolo to always supply the essentials” she said handling it fondly. “Wait here,” she walked away toward the women’s bathroom and remerged not long after empty handed.

“Where did you…” Began Sam but she just patted her upper leg.

“It’s all taken care of, it’s not metal so I should be able to take it with me through the detector.”

Collin grinned, “You’re a regular criminal Drew.”

Drew gave him a look, “let this be a lesson to you never to underestimate me.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I said gesturing to the full body scanners.

They were relatively new and not everyone went through them. Some random number like every sixteen people had to go through it.

Drew sighed deeply.

“We’ll just have to have an once of luck on our side,” said Collin.

“No such thing,” she began walking toward the line for security.

Collin was smiling at her in a way that made my stomach flop strangely. I had no idea what could have triggered it but for some reason I wanted the metal detector to go off. It didn’t and she didn’t get called to go through the scanner. I was relieved of course but the way Collin retrieved her bag for her made me feel the same pang in my gut I still didn’t understand. We all got through fine with the exception of Sam who was taken aside to do a hand swipe.