Meliora - Extricate - 27

[lady_mab]

Zoné Altair

Jun’s eyes peek from behind the tablet as she watches us struggle on how to finish up our turn. “You are taking too long.”

I make a small whine in the back of my throat as I struggle to flip through the screens. “You are too fast!”

“It is not a race, but if it was, I would win.” She smirks at Glen, because the game was his idea. We just didn’t realize how good she would be.

“We’re supposed to be solving this together,” I remind her. “Just because you have the ability to pick this up like nobody’s business doesn’t mean you have to brag.”

She tilts her head to the side, unfamiliar with the expression, but is distracted when twin beeps come through from our computers. “Oh, good.”

Jun sets the tablet back in her lap and begins to scroll through the next set of puzzles. “Alright, are we going to want to head to the throne room or the dungeon?”

“I thought the clues were leading to the dungeon,” Glen says.

I read through the clues once again, but fail to see where he would be getting this information. “Why would she be in the dungeon?”
He leans over to poke at my screen. “Right there. The shoes.”

“Uhhh….” I shift my screen from one side to the other, as if the tiltshift would actually help. It doesn’t. “Okay, sure, we can check in the dungeon.”

Jun gasps and looks offended when we both glance at her. “I did not even think about the shoes.”

There’s another beep, but this time it’s from our phones.

Glen starts to reach for his, but Jun nudges his leg with her foot. “No, we are running out of time! This first, text message second,” she says.

He purses his lips, and looks to me as if I’ll be of any help. “You realize that if we’re all getting a message it might be for Meliora.”

“Or it could be Robbie asking us to settle another argument.” I click the dungeon icon and move all of our games onto the next screen. “Either way, time is of the essence!” Jun might be putting together the clues a lot faster than Glen or myself, but I still have a competitive streak a mile long.

We proceed through the final round of the game, which ends with both Jun and I shouting in horror and betrayal as Glen's character reveals himself to be the mastermind behind it all.

"I cannot believe you!" Jun shouts as a 'GAME OVER' flashes over the screen. She whirls to face him, smacking his arm as he attempts to defend himself with a pillow. "You did that on purpose!"

"You bet I did!" He's laughing too hard that he almost falls off the edge of the bed as Jun continues her relentless attack.

"What was that shit about the shoes?!" I ask. I nudge at his leg with my foot, unable to get any closer lest I get smacked by Jun as well.

"I cannot believe I fell for that!" Jun covers her face with her hands and falls back. Her groan is muffled by her palms. "I knew we should have gone to the throne room!"

Glen tries to respond, but can't get the words out as he starts coughing. It sounds bad, and Jun peers out from between her fingers to check on him. But he's laughing in between the hacking coughs, having a hard time settling down from either long enough to actually manage words. "That was such a rookie mistake."

There is a chorus of groans from me and Jun as Glen pushes himself back upright and reaches for his phone.

Jun kicks her feet out towards me, so I return the favor by swiveling my chair in her direction and preparing to engage in a foot war.

"Hey--" Glen croaks, coughing one more time as he leans forward to catch our attention. "You might want to check out that message."

We groan again. "Meliora?" I ask, and he nods. "Ugh, what do they want now."

Apparently, they want to do an impromptu-check in. Which is utter baloney. "Didn't they basically just have one of these?" The event on Halloween was almost a month ago, but with no other messages or updates in between, it's starting to feel like it was just the other night.

"I think this is different," Jun says softly. She props her elbows against her knees and types at her phone. I wonder if she's reaching out to her uncle about it.

We haven't had the chance to discuss that further, mostly because neither of us wants to bring it up. It's difficult to get answers when I don't want to answer anything in return. If I ask about her uncle, anything beyond what she freely gave, will come with the unspoken price of questions about my brother.

And that's definitely something I'm still not prepared to think about.

"I guess we'll just... hang out here until they come?" Glen offers. "I don't know what I'm supposed to tell my parents when mysterious ALICE agents come knocking on my door, though."

"I wonder how we'll know when they'll get here." I rest my feet on the bed between Jun and Glen and slump down in the chair, considering the text message. "Do you think they'll give us a countdown timer? Or something like 'Your ALICE agent will be Gladys, her estimated time of arrival is between 10:45 and 11:15pm'."

Glen chuckles and shakes his head. "I doubt they'll be that convenient."

"Ughhh." I sink further into the chair.

Jun's frown deepens during the course of our conversation to the point where she is visibly upset by whatever she reads on her phone.

"Oi. Everything okay?" I nudge her with my foot, and she jumps at the pressure.

"Yes. Sorry. My friend says that he is sending someone to check up on me."

Glen and I exchange a glance. "Why, because we're not good enough?"

"I don't know." She reaches up a hand and tugs at her hair in frustration. "I might leave a bit earlier and meet them outside."

"Do you even know who is being sent? That sounds like a dangerous idea." Glen fidgets with his phone before setting it back on his side table. "Do you want us to go with you? It would also prove as a good way to get out of the house if I pretend like I'm walking you to the station."

Jun hesitates, looking between the two of us. But then her eyes settle on me for just a bit longer before she shakes her head. "No, I'll be fine." She glances down at her phone as it lights up with a new message and she swears softly under her breath. "Never mind, looks like the friend is almost here. I will go tell him he does not have to stay."

Glen wants to say something. He's perched, poised, ready to go. He looks to me for a cue.

I fold my hands over my stomach but don't move. Something about Jun's glance was odd, but I let it pass for now. "We'll be here."

A small sound escapes Glen as Jun rises to her feet and passes me a quick smile. He rises as well but she pats him on the shoulder. "I will be fine. I trust my friend enough to not send someone that I cannot trust." She gives him a warmer smile and slips out of the room.

Glen stands there for several seconds, watching her shadow fade down the hallway, before he rounds on me and pushes the chair I'm sitting in.

It swivels away and my feet slip off the bed despite my yelp of protest. "What was that for?!"

"Are you two fighting?!"

I righten myself, only to find him visibly upset. "What? No. Why?"

"You've been weird around each other." Then he narrows his eyes and studies me. "You didn't try to ask her out, did you?"

"What?!" This question comes as far more of a surprise than it probably should have. The concept is so far from my mind. "No! We've just... I don't know. Weird team stuff, I guess. I didn't really think it was going to be so noticeable."

He sits down with a huff and stares at his phone. It doesn't do anything, and neither does he. A minute passes, and I stare at my phone too. I'm waiting for some sort of evidence of ALICE, or perhaps a text from Jun.

Glen's voice, when he does finally speak up, is soft and uncertain. "You... would tell me... wouldn't you?"

I consider this request for several seconds, but can't figure it out. "Tell you what?"

He looks embarrassed, but hesitates before saying, "If anything bad was happening between the two of you."

"Oh. Yeah. Of course."

His shoulders relax a degree. "I guess we just gotta sit here and wait, then."

"Yeah... I guess so."

We pass the time in relative silence, Glen flipping through his tablet as I reply to Lysander’s texts as he asks about our situation. Apparently he’s going to go check on Lia and Lio, but I let him know that we’re doing okay. I don’t mention that Jun is meeting a Mysterious Stranger sent by a Mysteriouser Strangerer.

After that, I spend several minutes attempting to balance my phone in various ways. None are terribly successful.

"Okay, it's been like, forever," I finally say as my latest attempt fails and my phone tumbles to the ground. The light flashes with a notification from Lysander. "I wonder if she froze."

He scoffs. "You worry more about her freezing than if she got kidnapped?" His own words shock him back to the situation at hand and he jumps to his feet. "What if she got kidnapped?"

I try to get him to sit back down, but he's heading towards the door. "Glen! She's not kidnapped! I bet you she's a popsicle outside."

"That's not better!" he calls over his shoulder.

I groan as I push myself to my feet. We reach the front door at about the same time, and I notice Jun's jacket hanging up on a peg. I lean over him as he's struggling to shove his feet into his shoes. "I'll go. Stay here."

"I'll go with you--"

"You have a super gnarly cough, man." I slip my feet into my shoes with ease and grab mine and Jun’s jackets with my other hand. "Give your health a little thought, alright?"

Glen's lips pinch together and, to top it off, he attempts to smother down a cough. His only other response is a grunt as he crosses his arms over his chest.

I slip on my jacket as I tug open the door. I let it swing shut behind me, cutting off the sound of Glen's conversation with his mom.

A wall of cold hits me as soon as I step out onto the open walkway. It's easy to spot Jun's pink hair beneath the fluorescent glow of a street light. I can't make out the other person, but sure enough she's not alone.

"Jun!" I call down. She jumps, but doesn't turn around. "You've been outside for ten minutes without a jacket, and Glen and I have a bet going if you're frozen or not." Well, technically the bet was if she was frozen or kidnapped, but I didn't stop to consider if someone had kidnapped a Jun popsicle.

She still doesn't turn towards me. In fact, she leans in closer to the strange as he watches my approach. It's not until I hit the crosswalk, adjusting my hood to try and keep some of my head's heat in, that Jun finally turns to look at me and I realize what's wrong.

I don't know why I didn't catch it sooner.

That look she gave me back in Glen's room, the constant dodging of our requests.

Of course it would be Catoir.

I pick up my pace as soon as I hit the street, letting my long legs carry me across the distance in a matter of seconds. I drop the jacket on Jun's head and, without waiting to see if it stayed, I put myself between the two of them. "What are you doing here?"

No, change in plans. I don't want to look at him. So I look at Jun instead. "What is he doing here? He wasn't bothering you, was he?"

She's struggling to come up from air from the depths of her jacket, and I feel a bit guilty for depositing it on top of her like that. "No, of course not. He was the person my friend sent."

I don't know what kind of expression I'm making, because I have to struggle to work around the idea of Catoir with friends. First that redhead Starling chick, and now someone else?

I shake my head to dismiss the thought. "This guy isn't any good at looking after people. And since when did the two of you share friends?"

Jun shrugs on her jacket and hugs her arms to her chest. "I met him at the first Meliora meeting. He liked my hair."

Behind me, Catoir makes a small sound, as if something just clicked in his brain, but doesn’t say anything else.

"He's probably a criminal," I push, wanting to usher her back inside before proceeding to avoid this conversation.

"Oh please," she says, surprisingly defensive. "I have met worse."

This brings me up short only long enough to wonder once again about her uncle. "Whatever. Let's go back inside. This loser can do whatever he wants until ALICE gets here."

"Fine by me," Catoir says. "I didn't mean to intrude."

Jun puts a hand to my elbow and, with a bit more force than I expect, guides me around so that she stands between Catoir and myself. "He came all the way out here to check on me. I will stay."

"Unnecessarily, it seems." He rubs his glasses on his scarf.

"No," I say as an idea strikes me. Jun is right: I need to stop avoiding this. "You know what? I have a great idea. I'll call Glen down and then all four of us can freeze in awkward silence until ALICE gets here."

I tug my phone out of my pocket and jab at the screen, only for my grin to falter. Nothing happens, so I tap at it again. "Jun, I think I broke it."

She takes my hand and looks at the phone. “No service. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Catoir mutters something to himself and adjusts his scarf. Before any of us can speak up, a voice calls out to us.

"I am sorry for that. We just don't want anyone to send out any unnecessary information when we are here." A man in a heavy wool coat invites himself to our cluster. He has a small device in his hand and smiles warmly at us. "Phones, if you please."

I can't help but glance at Catoir and tug nervously at my hood. "You from ALICE, then?"

"I am." Said with a toothy smile.

Catoir hands over his phone first. "How does that work? How can you make sure you've reached everybody?"

"We have a comprehensive list that will mark you off as we check you in," the man explains as his phone says, Welcome, Fletcher Oswin. "The app also serves as a tracking program, which can be used to ensure that you really were at the sight when you checked in. I mean in general, not just tonight."

Jun hands over her phone while still gripping my wrist. Neither of us say anything -- partly because I don't trust my own voice, and partly because I see Jun's very curious expression as she watches the agent check in her phone.

Welcome, Jun Zhou.

"So that is how you can find all the participants? Impressive. And you are certain you will be able to complete this all in one night?" I hate the way that Catoir can carry on like there is nothing wrong.

I'm starting to feel increasingly nervous. My stomach churns and, despite the chill, my hands are sweaty. ALICE told us we couldn't have relatives in the game, but that doesn't explain how Catoir and I can participate, or how Lio, Lia, and their brother Rhys can.

There's still a lot of questions, and all Catoir can do is talk about the tech.

"I think you underestimate ALICE's efficiency." The agent's voice is clipped despite his genial smile. He hands Jun's phone back to her and looks at me expectantly.

I huff and puff and roll my eyes but hand my phone to the man.

"Are you disrupting the signal through that app or on a larger scale?” Catoir continues. Since when was he such a tech geek?!

Also, if he keeps talking, the longer this is going to take!

The agent lifts an eyebrow but doesn't look up. "You sure do ask a lot of questions."

Hands in his pockets, looking as cool as a frozen cucumber, Catoir says, "This is a game for information. I should think you'd be allowed to give it freely. We're being checked in, albeit forcibly, for an event -- aren't the rewards for that answers?"

Welcome, Zoné Altair.

The man hesitates, looks at my phone and his device, before slowly looking up at Catoir. "Fletcher Oswin?"

"I believe that was already answered for you." He waves a hand at the QR code. His voice is loud enough to block out all the internal yelling that I'm doing at him. "Unless you are doubting the point of this exercise, which was to weed out suspected cheaters."

The agent inhales, holds his breath, and hands me back my phone.

"Thanks," I say, for lack of a better response.

"As for your earlier question, I am disrupting the general reception for any phone." He holds up his device so we can see the screen -- a detailed map of the area with the three of us clustered around him as green dots. There are two red ones in Glen's apartment building. "Any tablets and wireless devices are disabled with it as well, but it all results in the ability to send or receive data."

"Uh-huh," I say, trying once again to use my phone. "More like the inability to even use our phones for anything. I can't even bring up my music."

The agent smiles and I'm almost afraid he's about five seconds from patting me on the shoulder. "That will be because of the app you installed. Things will resume to normal as soon as I am about a hundred meters from you."

Jun looks at me, but I don't know how to interpret it.

"Two more still in the area: Glen Willis and Stacey March."

Jun tenses, hands balling into fists. "Are you just going to knock on their door?"

He looks down at her, curious. "You know either of them?"

"We're friends with Glen," I cut in.

Once again, Jun's hand lands on the crook of my elbow. "Zoné. Can you take him over to Glen? Find a good excuse to get him out of the apartment so his family does not get curious."

"But--"

"Fletcher will walk me to the train station. I should be getting home."

A strangled noise works its way out of my throat and I look at Catoir -- wondering if he will speak up to reject that idea.

Instead, all he does is fiddle with his cellphone.

This is royally unfair.

I finally decide I want to try and tackle this, and I don't get the chance.

Alright, so maybe deciding to address the situation while involved with an ALICE agent up close and personal isn't the best idea, but I literally have no other chances.

"Fine," I say, tearing my gaze away from my brother when he refuses to look at me. "C'mon, Mr. Destroyer of Cell Phones. Let's get a move on."

Jun's fingers slip from my arm. "I will see you on Monday. Say bye to Glen and his parents for me."

I really don't want to, but I don't have a choice. I wave the agent to follow, and together we make our way back across the street.

I trudge up one flight of stairs, tell him to wait, and move three doors down to Glen's apartment. I open the door and find Glen sitting right where I left him, arms wrapped around his legs and chin resting on his knees.

His eyes swivel up to meet mine, and he jumps to his feet. "Where's Jun?"

"Good news, not a popsicle!" I say, but his eyes widen with shock. I hurry to finish the thought before he can assume the worst -- though considering who she left with, I don't really know. "Not kidnapped either! She's going home though. Can I talk to you outside super fast?"

Glen studies me for a moment before glancing over his shoulder. "Yeah, I'll walk you to the station," he says loudly for the sake of his parents. I can hear the television in the other room. He steps into the hall with me and closes the door behind him. "What's up?"

I jerk a thumb over my shoulder and turn to find that the ALICE agent has moved to stand right beside the door. "Christ!" I shout, jumping. "I told you to wait!"

He ignores me and turns his full attention to Glen. "Phone, please?"

Confused, Glen takes a few seconds to pat down his pockets before locating his phone and handing it over. Welcome, Glen Willis.

The man smiles, though a lot of the cheer has left it since his conversation with us down on the street. "Thank you for your continued participation." He nods his head to both of us before heading back for the stairs and going up another flight.

Glen and I listen to his footsteps in silence until they go up one more flight. Our phones are still out of service. "What was that all about?" he finally asks.

"I..." I don't know how to explain it to him. I've spent all this time prying into his situation on the name of friendship, but it became very obvious today that I am not returning the favor. "It's a very long story, and I really want to be able to tell you."

He waits, and when nothing further comes, prompts, "But...?"

My breath leaves me in a distraught huff. "I don't know how." I rub my cheekbone for a moment before realizing that I am unconsciously rubbing the star tattoo. "We'll figure something out. I think I need to talk to Jun about it first."

Glen's expression flickers, and he looks away. "Alright." He certainly doesn't sound alright, but neither of us push it.

"I'll see you at school on Monday, yeah?" I say, suddenly tired.

"Yeah," he echoes, and steps back inside.

I stand in the hallway long enough to take a deep breath and let it out slowly through my nose. But then I decide that I really don't want to still be standing here when the ALICE agent goes back down the stairs, so I take the initiative and leave.

It's not until I'm the requisite one hundred meters away that my phone starts working again, but by that point, I've had enough time to figure out what I want to say.

First, I text Jun.

Then, later, I text Catoir.

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