by Katrina Cope
Holding the device carefully so that he wouldn’t press its detonation button by accident, Jayden started kicking and elbowing the professor wherever he could. His small frame struggled against the grown man’s strength. He was just about to start biting him on the arm when the tall man fell.
Professor Anna had managed to knock the feet out from under him, which caused the professor to let Jayden go as he tried to stop himself from falling.
Now free, Jayden ran into the next room and quickly hid the device. He then ran back through the doorway and dragged the unconscious Aaron out of harm’s way. With that done, he went to help Professor Anna, who was now facing her husband in a fighting stance, with her legs shoulder width apart.
They both had their arms up, ready to defend themselves or strike each other. Professor Anna had wet streaks from the tears that had streamed down her face not long before. Those streaks didn’t match the look of hatred and determination she now had as she glared at her insane husband.
“A spineless blob—unloving mother, huh?” she spat at him.
A mocking smile spread across his face. “Well, if the shoe fits, sweetie—wear it!”
“How dare you!” she screamed as she charged at him and did a jumping roundhouse to his head. He wasn’t prepared for the attack. She landed with grace on both feet while he fell to the floor. Blood and teeth flew from his mouth and cracks formed on his glasses.
Wow! Aaron wasn’t exaggerating when he said she was good, Jayden thought.
The professor got back up. Sadistically, he started to laugh, a horrible mocking laugh. “Is that all you’ve got, sweetie?”
Professor Anna didn’t respond, but just stood there waiting for any physical reaction from the professor.
“Aren’t you going to give it a little more effort?” he added. He gazed at her posture and smirked. “Give it up darling, you know you don’t have a chance against me.”
“Yeah you’re big,” she agreed, “but you’re also a slow goof.”
He mocked her in a childish voice. “Oooo! Listen to the little hotshot woman thinking she’s all ‘that’. Now she has a couple of black belts to her name.” Acting out inverted commas with his hands he accentuated the ‘that’.
He turned to Jayden.
“What did you do with the device, kid?” he asked, taking a step toward him.
“Back off, Eric! I’m not going to let you hurt any more people—not here, and not there,” she said, indicating the screen.
He kept walking toward Jayden, so Professor Anna did a spinning back fist to his temple, this time breaking his large glasses.
“You skank!” he screamed. “You broke my glasses!”
“No kidding, Einstein.” She sneered.
He took a dive at her and tried to grab her, but she quickly grabbed his hand and rotated it, twisting his arm and breaking his elbow. For good measure, she also kicked him in the groin.
He contained his pain as fast as he could and stepped forward to punch her in the head. She quickly diverted the punch by blocking it with the outside of her arm and gave him a roundhouse kick to the stomach at the same time. She then finished her assault with a sidekick to the face, breaking his nose and sending his head and upper body reeling backward.
He stumbled a few paces in reverse, then regained his balance. Although he was in immense pain, with an enormous effort, he grabbed her and threw her lightweight body headlong across the room. Her head hit the side of the table. With blood now trickling down the side of her face, she struggled without success to get up.
Jayden hated seeing the lovely Professor Anna so badly injured, but he was unable to help her. Professor Showden was still limping badly from his injuries. He was hardly able to walk and yet he was making his way to the door to the next room, where Jayden had hidden the device. Blood was pouring down his face.
“So where’d you hide it, boy?” he asked Jayden.
“I’m not going to tell you,” Jayden said, standing defiantly in the doorway.
The professor grabbed him by the throat with one large, long hand. Jayden knocked away the professor’s hand before punching him solidly in the solar plexus. With all the beatings, Jayden thought that the professor would now be ready to give up, but he saw that the professor was getting ready to attack yet again.
Jayden braced himself for the next move, but then there was a noise from behind him.
It was Eva. “I can’t find Avando anywhere,” she said.
He turned back to his attacker, who was still standing in front of him. Then, right before his eyes, he saw the professor’s eyes bulge almost out of their sockets and his body fall to the floor. Behind him stood Aaron, clearly proud of his solid kick through the professor’s legs to his groin.
“Aaron, you’re all right.” Jayden said with relief.
“I’ve found him!” Robert announced as he barged into the second room, followed closely by Charlie.
“Holy crap! What a mess! What on earth has gone on here?” Charlie asked, looking around in horror.
“Charlie,” came a soft, faint voice from the back of the other room.
“Anna?” Charlie hurried past the students and the crumpled mess of Professor Showden. “What the hell!” he cried when he saw her on the floor.
“Can you contain Eric?” she asked him.
“What?” He looked confused.
“He’s been a terrorist working undercover in our school,” she explained.
“Eric?” he asked, astonished.
“Yes, I know. I’m in just as much shock as you are—but please do it fast before he wakes up and can fight again.”
Charlie did as instructed, pulling out from his pocket several zip ties that he always had with him. He proceeded to tie up Professor Showden.
“Did he do that to you?” he asked, looking at her bruised and bloodied face across the room.
She nodded.
“Jeez! Who would’ve ever thought soft, sweet Eric would be capable of that?” he asked, shaking his head.
“Yeah, well, I got him with a few good ones, too. So did Aaron and Jayden,” she said, smiling slightly.
“I’m sure you did,” he agreed, looking at Eric’s battered body. “I don’t know how Avando is going to react when he finds out that his school programmer is a terrorist.” He sighed sadly. “And to think it happened here in our Sanctum.” After he’d secured the professor, he went to have a closer look at Professor Anna. “I’ll have to call the doctor for you.”
“I’ll be fine. Just make sure the children are taken care of, and that Avando is notified.”
Charlie eyed her and then nodded slowly.
- Chapter Seventeen -
Damage Control
Jayden was in the front office telling Robert and Eva what had happened while—at the same time—he filled in the blanks for Aaron, who had been out cold for part of it. Aaron also told his side of the story. Before this, they had found the ignition device for the bomb and secured it in a box that was closed and sealed with tape so that its button couldn’t be pushed accidentally.
“We need to get the surrogate to take the bomb out of that area and dispose of it.” Eva said.
“How can we do that?” asked Jayden.
“I believe this is where I come in,” Robert said. “I’m no way near as good as Professor Showden, but I certainly have a good chance of fixing these connections to the surrogate. First I need to see what condition these controls are in.” He walked over to the room where the fighting had taken place, with the others following close behind.
Professor Showden was now secured in a sitting position against the solid leg of a heavy table, with his face bloodied and some teeth noticeably missing.
Charlie had Professor Anna propped up as comfortably as possible in a corner of the room. Her soft, pretty face was also bloodied and bruised, and she was still looking dazed from the hard hit to her head. He was doing the best he could with his skills and with the equipment available to tend to her.
/> Robert marched over to the surrogate’s controls and took a moment to assess the damage. “We need someone to control the surrogate,” he said, and looked at Aaron.
Aaron shook his head. “I’m still dizzy from the hit to the head. I think Jayden should do it.”
Jayden was nervous, but he prepared to take on the surrogate’s role.
On the screen, the surrogate was standing motionless, still holding the explosive truck in its hands.
Eva took a look at the map to try to work out exactly where the surrogate was located. A look of horror crossed her face. “It looks as though he has the surrogate close to Parliament House.” She looked at the screen. “With so many people in the area, it looks like there’s going to be a ceremony held there today.”
“Can someone unplug this station from the electrical socket?” Robert asked after assessing the damage. “I just need to fix a few wires for the control of the surrogate.”
“I can do that,” Aaron said and made his way over to the plug, turned it off, and pulled it out. He then decided to sit next to it to give his head a rest. That way he’d be ready to plug it in later when that was needed.
Once it was unplugged, Robert started to work on the wires immediately.
Charlie had cleaned up both of the professors’ wounds as much as he could and stood. Jayden watched as he walked over to Scarlet’s access spot, and called, “Scarlet?”
As always when she was summoned, Scarlet’s face showed up immediately on the screen. “Yes, Charlie?”
“Is Avando around?”
“He’s just arrived back in his office from his walk,” she answered.
“Great. Can you put me through to him?”
“Certainly, Charlie.”
There was a moment’s pause before Avando’s face appeared on the screen. “Charlie, what can I help you with?”
“There’s been a huge problem here at Professor Showden’s external workshop.”
“Oh?” asked Avando, looking worried. “What sort of problem?”
“Well, from what I’ve understood, Eva, Robert, Aaron, and Jayden went looking for Professor Showden. It was because Scarlet was playing games with David and wouldn’t allow him to use the bathroom. This turned into a whole big mess that I will explain to you later.” He dismissed the subject with his hand. “This led them to look for the professor in his workshop. However, when they arrived here, they caught the professor engaged in terrorism.”
“What? That can’t be true!” Avando almost yelled as he turned pale. He paused, looking away from the screen, despair and anguish visible on his face. “They must be mistaken.”
“Unfortunately, I fear they aren’t,” Charlie said with sadness in his voice. “They proceeded to stop him, with Aaron taking on the professor by himself while the others ran to find help from me, Professor Anna, and yourself, but they couldn’t find you. Professor Anna was the first on the scene and has confirmed that what the kids say is true. She also had to fight her husband after her own assessment of the situation. She’s now a mess, both physically and mentally, from the ordeal.” He let out a large sigh.
Avando’s shoulders slumped as silence filled the air. “Wow! Who would’ve thought it would come to this?” he said with a voice full of resignation. “I will come and join you shortly.” The screen flickered off, and Charlie left the room and made his way back to the battle room.
“All right—that should be it,” exclaimed Robert excitably. “Can you turn it back on, Aaron?”
Aaron plugged it all back in and turned it on.
Jayden hooked himself up and started moving his hands carefully up and down with the truck still in them. It worked. An excited cheer went up from everyone in the group, except for Professor Showden.
“I haven’t fixed the audio functions yet, as well as a few other utilities,” Robert informed them, “but all you really need is movement and vision.”
“That’s all we need,” agreed Jayden.
Eva started directing Jayden out and away from the crowd and Jayden willingly followed her instructions. He didn’t need to say anything to anyone because if they didn’t move out of the way, he just nudged them slightly until they did. Some people gave him a dirty look, but he just laughed it off. If only they realized what was in my hands, then they wouldn’t be giving me that look, he thought.
He went to cross the road right as a bicyclist came flying past and bumped the surrogate so hard that it almost knocked the truck full of explosives out of his hands. If it weren’t for Jayden’s fast reactions in grabbing it quickly, it would’ve fallen. The whole room gasped at how close a call that had been. After checking the road for more vehicles, he crossed it and continued walking as fast as he could weave through the crowd of people.
“Okay. If you keep heading in that direction, Jayden, you’ll come to a really large lake,” Eva instructed him.
He kept moving as fast as he could through the people. The space between the buildings seemed to be opening up the farther he went, and finally the crowd became a little lighter, too. The more he moved, following the directions that Eva gave him, the fewer people there were. It allowed Jayden to pick up his pace to a run. He looked around after another hundred yards and saw almost no one around.
“You’re almost there,” Eva encouraged him.
He looked ahead now and saw water glimmering in the distance. There were hardly any buildings around this lake—at least certainly not in the near vicinity. His heart jumped with joy. He shifted into a sprint and ran to the water’s edge. Once there, he grasped the truck firmly with one hand and threw it as hard as he could, flinging it toward the middle—and hopefully the deepest part—of the lake. The occupants of the room in the real world cheered loudly.
“Now to see if we can set that thing off,” Eva called, while running to the other room to grab the ignition device. She snatched some scissors from one of the office desks, quickly cut the tape, and opened the lid of the box. She took the device back to the technical room, looked up at the screen, and then pressed down on the button. They watched as a large plume of water was expelled from the lake into the air and then fell back down again.
Cheers and laughter erupted again from the small group as a difficult job had been accomplished, and hundreds of people had been saved—all thanks to their combined efforts.
“I don’t know why you’re cheering,” slurred Professor Showden through his injured mouth. “That was only one of the small plans that were put in place.”
“What do you mean?” Eva snapped.
“Well, do you really think I was working alone?” asked the professor.
The room fell into silence as they all pondered this question.
He started laughing an evil laugh.
Right then, Avando walked into the room. “Don’t talk such rubbish, Eric,” he snapped, sternly cutting off the professor’s laugh. “What a preposterous notion.” He dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand as he glanced around the room. “Good Lord! What a mess!” He limped over to Professor Anna and Aaron and sat not far from them while looking at their injuries. “How are you both feeling?”
Professor Anna answered first. “Dizzy, and with a pretty serious headache—but besides that, all right.”
“What about you?” he asked Aaron.
“I’m okay. About the same as Professor Anna.”
“Hmmm. I think we should get you both to the school doctor as soon as possible,” he said. “I don’t need you both with concussions now, do I?”
They shook their heads slowly and gingerly. “Thank you both for fighting so diligently and putting others ahead of yourselves. Such an inspiring attitude!”
“We wouldn’t have done anything else,” Professor Anna responded, and Aaron agreed.
“Now, let’s see how evil looks after a few beatings.” He got up and moved over to have a closer look at Professor Showden. “Hmmm. Looks like they got you good,” he said to the professor while checking his wounds. “I’m gathering
a broken elbow, missing teeth, broken glasses, and a broken nose. At least that’s just what I can tell from a quick glance. Do you see now why you should’ve taken up Tae Kwon Do?”
“Ha, ha.” Professor Showden sneered.
“However, I’m certainly glad you didn’t,” he added loudly so that everyone else could hear. He stood up and addressed the rest of the room, “Such a great job, all of you. I’m so proud of your efforts. You’ve protected many innocent people. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
The students weren’t expecting the praise that Avando gave them. “How could we do anything but protect these people?” Eva asked, with Jayden and Robert nodding in agreement.
“I’m so glad you feel that way,” said Avando. “Now, I will need you uninjured students to clean up this mess as well as you can. What you can’t do, or fix, I will send some senior students over later to finish.”
“Gladly, Avando,” Robert said. The others were already starting the clean up.
Looking at Professor Showden, Avando said, “Now I should turn this scumbag over to the authorities.”
“I’ll drive you,” Charlie said, starting to make a move.
“Actually, Charlie, I’ll be fine. The car is automatic—and, besides, I need you to make sure Anna and Aaron get to the doctor.”
“Are you sure?” Charlie asked him, sounding uncertain.
“Yes, of course,” he said. Avando took another look at Aaron, “Actually, Jayden…”
He looked up from his cleaning. “Yes, Avando?”
“Please help Charlie by making sure that Aaron gets to the doctor’s safely.”
“Sure,” he promised.
“First, though, I want you and Charlie to give me a hand getting Professor Showden into the back of the car.”
“Glad to help,” Jayden said.
Charlie and Jayden escorted the gravely wounded Professor Showden to Avando’s personal car, which Avando had parked right outside the building. They zip tied his wrists together at the front, secured his body with a seat belt, and then zip tied his ankles together as well—just to be sure. With every movement, the professor groaned in pain.