Chapter One

Lincoln sat on his bed in his room, reading some comics in his underwear like he always did on Sunday afternoons. For him, Sunday was the only day that he could really enjoy himself. Monday through Friday were all out of the question. Saturday was the day that everyone had plans, which included Ronnie-Anne. He enjoyed hanging out with her, there was no doubt about it. But even the only boy in the world who knew how to keep all ten of his sisters, and his girlfriend happy, needed some time to himself; and to him, this was the best way to do it.

"Ahh... This is the Life..."

He spoke too soon. Right then his mom burst through the door to his room, making him jump and drop his comic on the floor.

"Whoops! Sorry Lincoln!"

The door to lincoln's room was notoriously easy to open, so if someone didn't hold onto the handle while opening it, like Rita did, the door would fling onto the dresser next to the entrance, making a nice loud Whack, even if it wasn't opened with great force. Lincoln, unfortunately, was the only one who consistently remembered this. Mostly because of the fact that his head started ringing every time he heard the door hit its target.

"Lincoln honey, you need to go outside and get some excersize."

Wonderful. Lincoln remembered the last time this happened. Not only did he cost the Royal Woods football team the championship trophy, but his sister got hurt, and he was ridiculed by everyone at school for over a month. That was not something that he was willing to go through again.

"Mom, I can't! Don't you remember what happened last time?"

"I do, and that's exactly why I'm not forcing you too join any sports this time. As long as you go outside and do something other than read comics or play video games, you can do whatever you want."

Lincoln wasn't exactly happy with it, but he was glad that she wasn't making him do one specific thing. That was what got him into the previous mess in the first place. As it had turned out, Lynn broke her ankle that day. It wasn't a sprain like everyone thought it was at first. Every time Lincoln thought about it, it made him cringe. He quickly got that memory out of his head and replied to his mother.

"Okay mom, just lemme finish this comic. It won't even take me two minutes, I'm almost done with it."

"Hmm... Fine. But If I come back in here in five minutes and find you still sitting there, you're going to be in big trouble mister!"

"Don't worry. I'll be long gone before then!" And with that, Rita shut the door to his room, accidentally slamming it again.

"Ugh..." Lincoln moaned. This was his one day to stay in bed and read comics or play videogames or do whatever he wanted. But now he had to throw all his plans away and go outside to actually do something.

Finishing his comic, he stood up and got his classic Lincoln clothes on; an orange polo and blue jeans. Before stepping out of the door, he grabbed his little handheld gaming device and put it into his back pocket. Maybe his mom wouldn't notice it. Stepping out of the door, he noticed his older sister, Leni, also reluctantly leaving her room. What could she possibly be doing?

"Leni?"

"Oh! Hey Linky!"

"Where are you going?"

"Umm... I was just gonna... walk around the park to break in these new shoes I got!" Lincoln could hear some hesitancy in her voice. It was a pretty good excuse for Leni, but everyone knew that she didn't walk anywhere but in the mall. So naturally, Lincoln thought that she was confronted about her lack of excersize too.

"Mom told you to get some excersize didn't she?" Lincoln said with a sympathetic look on his face.

Leni nodded her head in defeat. It wasn't hard to tell when Leni was lying, mostly because she didn't do it very often. As a matter of fact, Lincoln couldn't remember the last time that Leni even tried to hide something from them, let alone flat out lie to them. This must have been the first time in months or maybe even a year that she tried this. It was so out of character for her to do that unless her or her siblings were in trouble.

"Can I go with you? Mom said the same thing to me..."

"Of course you can Linky! It's always better with two people, that way you have someone to talk to!"

Lincoln wasn't exactly fond of hearing Leni talk about everything and anything while they were at the park, but he figured it beat the heck out of just walking around and not doing anything. So together, they walked down the stairs and left the house, making their way to the park. Surprisingly, Leni didn't immediately start talking. Instead it was Lincoln who did.

"Mom is so nosy..."

"What?"

"I mean..." Lincoln scratched his head for a second, thinking of a way Leni would understand it. "She gets in our business all the time..."

"Ugh... Tell me about it... Like... I get that she's our mom and stuff and that she's supposed to, like, help us out and all that, and she's really good at it too! But sometimes it gets, like, super annoying when she's always checking up on us. It just gets me so irritated sometimes. And I read somewhere that that's totes not good for your skin."

"I know right! Not the skin thing, but mom. She is just so annoying... Arghh..."

"Hey, try not to worry about it too much. Too much stress can cause Acne you know, and nobody wants that."

Despite the fact that none of their family really had problems with acne, which surprised all of them, Leni was right. It wasn't good for you to stress out over simple things. Besides, Rita was their mother, she was just doing what she thought was best for them. With that thought in mind, he also was slightly thankful that their mom didn't make just him go walk around. It would have been awful trying to do something outside by himself, even if he did have his little game, which he had completely forgot about at this point. And while Leni and Lincoln didn't exactly have the same hobbies and neither of them were even close to liking the same things, they got along really well, and not just because they were siblings either. Leni knew how to talk about anything and everything and Lincoln knew how to listen to anything and everything and even chime in on a few things he may have known about. You learn how to do that really well when you have ten sisters.

The two of them were just chatting with each other as they walked to the park. When they got there, they didn't stop, they just kept walking, not even keeping track of the time. It was just before five when they left and it was nearly seven thirty when they realized they needed to get home. The two of them probably would have continued talking if it weren't for the fact that it was starting to get dark outside. Both of them had succesfully spent two and a half hours not only outside, but also walking around and getting some decent excersize.

"Hey Leni, can we sit down for a minute before we go home?"

"Sure Linky! Tbh, my legs are getting kind of tired too. And my feet are a little sore."

"Probably because of those new shoes you're wearing."

As Lincoln sat down, he remembered that he had his gaming device in his back pocket. A huge grin crossed his face as he took it out and immediately started playing on it. The game that was in it was an old, but time consuming game. If it weren't for Leni reminding him that they needed to get home, he probably would have sat there all night long playing it. Even when they got up from the bench, he was still playing it while walking back to the house. At this point he was partially ignoring Leni as she was talking, making comments like, "Yup" "cool" and "no way!" when she looked at him.

Finally, Lincoln looked up to see that the house was in sight. The lovely view of various objects scattered across the yard was the only one of it's kind in the entire city of Royal Woods. Lincoln pocketed his game as he got closer, he didn't want his mom to expect anything. He put his hands in his pockets and, still looking forward, called back to Leni, who had been uncharacteristically silent for the past few minutes.

"Leni, we're almost home."

No response.

"Leni?" Lincoln looked back to see that Leni was nowhere to be found. She didn't pass him up, so he just assumed that she had fallen behind after getting distracted by a cute squirrel or something like that. He started waiting for her to catch up, checking the time every so often. Five minutes passed. Ten Minutes passed. Lincoln was starting to get a little worried. Fifteen minutes passed and Leni was still nowhere in sight. Lincoln's heart rate started rising and his adrenaline started pumping as he expected the worst.

"Leni! Where are you?!"

When he recieved no response yet again, Lincoln started freaking out and ran back towards the park as fast as he could, stopping to look behind bushes and trees every so often. There was no way she could be hiding from him, trying to freak him out like this, she wasn't good enough at it. Lincoln's voice had such a worried tone to it, that there was no way Leni wouldn't respond if she was within earshot. She was too concerned about her other siblings well being to intentionally make them that worried.

Leni was nowhere to be seen and was not responding to Lincoln's desperate attempts to find out where she was. Lincoln wasn't even halfway back to the park yet before tears started spilling out of his eyes. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before. What if something happened to her? How was he going to tell everyone else? What if she was never found? That last question forced him back to reality. She would be found, he was sure of it. But what he wasn't sure about, was when and by what means.

A little ways past what the Louds considered the halfway marker when walking to and from the park, Lincoln found Leni's handbag with a bunch of her makeup and other stuff scattered out on the ground. Just a few feet away, he could make out tiny dark drops of something on the sidewalk, only illuminated by a street light. It was still pretty dark, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what was staining the sidewalk. Lincoln stopped in his tracks upon seeing this and fell to his knees, really sobbing at this point.

"No... Not Leni... Please..."

"Something's wrong..." Rita told her husband.

"Now what makes you say that honey?"

"Lincoln and Leni haven't returned from their walk yet."

"Listen, I'm sure they're fine. They probably just lost track of time."

"But they said that they would be back before it got dark!"

"Hey, if something happened, they would let us know. You know they never tell us if they're going to be late," Lynn Sr chuckled slightly. "They take after us a bit too well."

Rita sighed, and a smile formed on her face "You're right. They're probably walking back home as we speak!"

"Exactly! Now come on, lets finish up dinner so it will be ready when they get back."

Rita nodded and started setting the tables. Despite her husband's reassurance, she still couldn't help but feel something in the pit of her stomach. There was something going on, she just knew it, but brushed those feelings aside for the time being and continued with supper.

"I hope they're okay..."

Lincoln was sprinting down the sidewalk back towards the house with Leni's bag in his hand, her stuff sealed safely inside it as it jerked around. Lincoln had never run faster in his life. His legs were pumping back and forth as his eyes, full of tears, scanned the sidewalk and surrounding areas for any signs of Leni. Nothing. If it wasn't for the sudden adrenaline rush he got, he would be weeping uncontrollably on his knees, not getting anywhere.

He couldn't stop thinking about his older sister and what she could possibly be going through right now. He didn't know a whole lot about these things, but he knew that nothing good could possibly come out of it. He always saw stories like this on the news and had heard some of the things that happened to them. He had never worried about something like that happening to any of his sisters; especially any of his older ones. But now, the only thing that he could think about, was what was going to happen to Leni. Even if they did find her before anything bad happened, Lincoln still wouldn't be able to forgive himself. He had been so engrossed in his game, that he didn't even notice Leni's dissapearance. This would be something that he would never forget. It would stay with him for the rest of his life, haunting him. His sister was in terrible danger because he couldn't look away from his video game. Even if he wasn't playing his game and it still ended up the same way, it would have been better knowing he did everything in his power to make sure something like this never happened. But he didn't. He couldn't leave his video games be for just two hours. He had to bring them with him.

Lincoln suddenly stopped, just a few hundred feet away from the house. He took his little game that he was so amused by in his hand and stared at it. It was the only thing that stopped him from making a difference, and now, terrible things could be happening to his sister, because of it. No, not because of it, because Lincoln was too selfish to just leave it at home like his mother told him to. It was his own fault and he knew it. This thing was just a toy, it couldn't force anyone to do what they didn't want to. But he still couldn't stand the sight of it anymore. He raised his arm and threw it down on the sidewalk, shattering it into a thousand pieces instantly. A tiny bit of smoke came up from it before Lincoln began his sprint again, heading towards the house which was back in view now.

Lincoln didn't waste any time. He sprinted around the corner and up the creaky wooden stairs, not even bothering with the door handle. He just shoved the front door open, slamming it into the wall next to them. Lori was sitting on the couch watching TV when her brother came in. She was about to scold him for coming in so violently. Her face was already beginning to scrunch up. But then she looked closer and saw tears in his eyes and Leni's purse in his arm. Her face changed drastically upon seeing his. Slamming the door was the last thing she was thinking about now. She could only think about any of the possible reasons why Lincoln would be crying as he was running into the house.

"Lincoln! Are you okay? What happened?"

She immediately ran up to him to check him for any scrapes or bruises. Hearing Lori so worried, especially after hearing the door slam against the wall, made everyone else rush downstairs. Their parents also came out of their room upon hearing the commotion. Everyone was down at the front door before Lincoln even had a chance to say anything. They all bombarded him with questions, wondering what was going on.

"Girls! Give Lincoln some space!" Their dad boomed. "Okay now sport, can you tell us what happened?"

Sniffling, Lincoln reluctantly told them, "I... I think Leni's been... been..." Silence hung in the air for a few moments before he finally revealed what he thought happened.

"Kidnapped..."

Thanks to everyone who read the first chapter in this story. I currently do not know how long this will end up being but I sincerely appreciate everyone who read it. Please leave a review and thanks again!