THE LUCKY ONES: Chapter Four
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 8:15PM CALIFORNIA - OUTSIDE A BAR
"Save the world?" I was baffled. This couldn't be happening. "Yes Zack; with your help, we will succeed in our mission. We will save the world. From what, we do not know yet, but we are eager to learn about it." The man looked at me like he was expecting me to tell him something, something that I would know, a vital piece of information that would change his perception of the world. But I didn't know any crucial information that might change his entire view of the world, so I didn't say anything. A moment of awkward silence came, but the man didn't let it go on too long - after a while, he stood up, holding out his hand. "Anyway, I'm Barry." I took his hand and presented myself with my full name; "Zack Moonie". Barry and I shook hands. "Nice to meet you" He clasped his hands together and rubbed them against each other. As this went on, a strange wind gathered behind him, trapping various newspapers and other garbage left behind by all kinds of people inside of a circle of sorts. The circle of wind eventually turned into a mini-tornado, before it started to emit a blue-ish, glowy, neon-like light. For an instance, all the particles in the air flooded into view, spinning around, before both the wind and the glowing particles disappeared and a woman stood where there just a moment before had been absolutely nothing. She walked firmly toward us. "Zack meet Marcy" was the only thing Barry managed to say before Marcy grabbed us both, and I felt a deep tug in the nether regions. I was just about to puke my guts out when we came to a firm, yet light stop, and a warehouse appeared before my eyes. I gasped, wanting to draw my breath, but not quite making it. I didn't puke though. Marcy scoffed. "First timers" she said, walking elegantly on further into the warehouse.
It took a few minutes before I was breathing normally again, and while I adjusted to the teleporting or whatever we had just gone through, Barry stood at my side, waiting. When I finally got back on my feet, I had a million questions, all screaming in my head at the same time, wanting an answer. I started with the most obvious one, after the pointless "are-you-alrights" and "yes-I'm-fine" was over. I took a deep breath and started pumping Barry for information. "Where are we?" Barry smiled; he'd probably anticipated this. "We're at an underground warehouse - this is our HQ. The Lucky Ones' HQ, if you've forgotten." He looked at me understandingly. "No no, I remember." Barry smiled. "Well, then no need to do the whole dramatic "end-of-the-world"-speech again then. That's good." I cracked a smile. "But we need to get down to the HQ - more of your questions will be answered there." As we made our way down to the HQ, I managed to get some info out of Barry, but not much. For instance, he did not know, and didn't think anyone did, how long this "organization" had existed. But he did tell me that Marcy was a teleporter, who also could create and control portals, not just be one herself. The "rubbing your hands together"-thing was a signal to call for her.
From what Barry told me, these people had money, powers and a mission. The question was what all this had to do with me, and what we were going to save the world from...
We reached the briefing room mere minutes later. "Ah, there you are Zack. Come in, come in" At first, I didn't recognize the man talking, but then a light went up for me. "Dad?" He was standing before a huge screen, looking like a big executive, ready to present his new products and convince the masses that they were worth it. I ran up to the stage, hugging him, finally realizing how much I'd missed my kind adoptive family. It was refreshing to know that he was in on this madness, whatever it actually was. "Oh hoho, let's take it a lil' easy here, Zackie! I'm getting ol', you know?" I squeezed harder. "I'm so glad to see you again." I let go and looked into his familiar grin. "And I'm glad to see you." Then his face suddenly turned dark and serious, in a way that I'd never experienced before. "But there's no time for this now. We have a job to do, and we don't have much time to do it on." He sighed. "Sit down Zack, and I'll tell you all you need to know..." So I sat down, and I listened. My father opened with the following statement: "In four days, a new type of bomb so powerful it is capable of destroying half the world will detonate in Washington. In that instant, the whole American continent, including a large chunk of China and all of Japan will evaporate; it won't be anything left of it. At all. Because of this, the seas will lower, leaving whole regions almost without water, in addition to killing a lot of fish and various other sea-based species. This will be a major event in the history of mankind, but it'll also be devastating; the world will change forever, and it'll never be the same again.
Now, we have a small chance of stopping this, but not enough time to be lazy about it. We don't know why the bomb explodes, and it's not really that important either. To stop this, we're gonna need the deactivation codes from the NSA-supercomputer in Boston. We have two choices when it comes to this. Number one is to kidnap an NSA-agent and make him commit treachery, something that's extremely unlikely for an agent that knows what we need to know. The other option is to rob a bank in New York. This bank is actually a cover for a NSA/CIA/NASA-co-operation, an operation that decides codes to access a lot of these supercomputers. Unfortunately, these codes change every two minutes, so we need to find a way to break into the bank, down into the vault where they keep the codes, get it, remember it, then get to Boston from New York in less than two minutes, break into the NSA-site and access the supercomputers, retrieving the deactivation-codes for the new bomb, then get to Washington before the bomb explodes. Now, we have a plan, but it's going to take a while to set up, and we need your help. In addition to this, neither of us can be seen; you need to do this if it's gonna work, Zack. It's in our orders. So, are you in?"
I pretended to think about it for a while, but really? A chance to rob a bank, get a code, get to Boston from New York, break into a NSA-facility to retrieve a deactivation-code, only to stop a new, dangerous bomb from changing mankind forever? Who was I kidding, of course I was going through with it!
Reader Comments (3)
Well this certainly kicked into high gear! A couple of things: in the section where there's a lot of "HQ"ing, perhaps you could intersperse or throw in a mention of "headquarters" to break up the HQery. Also, I think that when there's more than one person speaking perhaps it might be good to break up the paragraph, both because big paragraphs are hard to read and also because it is difficult to keep track of everything when dialogue from multiple persons is in a single paragraph.
I'm liking this and wow, what an exciting adventure Zack has ahead of him. That is a lot of things to have to do in such a miniscule amount of time, so I can't wait to see how The Lucky Ones will pull this off with their combined powers.
You befriended me on GG.. Checking out your site. I will read some soon. I need to put together a site like this for my classes (I am about to become a teacher).
Um. Ian - what's GG? I am at a bit of a loss there... Anyway, what kind of teacher will you be?