Hi Everyone!
This is a story I came up with about thousand years ago - which can be translated to: sometime in autumn. It was mainly inspired by the Hunger Games trilogy, which I think you will realize some chapters later.
There may be ships apart from the mentioned Jonead appearing in it, however, I can't tell you about them for the sake of the surprise. ^.^
Disclaimer: I do not own the 39 Clues.
So, let's start:
Chapter 1
Location: Cahill Command Center, USA
"Ugh... If you knew how much I hate you... Why can't you just... fit like the others?" Sinead Starling muttered angrily. " I... I am doing my best, I... I sacrificed everything, but... you... you're ruining it a- ...Finally!"
She rose triumphantly the cable she had been begging to. Even if it took her 4 days, 21 hours, 5 minutes and 32 seconds, she found the mistake in her plans and corrected it by connecting the wires in the right way. Her invention got ready and - if everything went as planned - her Nobel-prize did so, too.
"Now, all I have to do is activating the capsules." She leaned closer to the device to push the "on" button. "Time for the truth!"
Her fingers got closer... and closer... and...
"Hiyaaaa!"
Without any warning, Dan Cahill kicked the door open and flew into the room in a ninja-kick pose, falling right onto the promising gadget, pulling out all the cables as he landed on them. Before Sinead could have said anything or just had a heart-attack, he jumped up and smirked.
"The ninja is saving you from the man-eating room!" He yelled triumphantly.
"The... wha-?"
"You haven't given a sign of life for 4 days, so we decided to go in..." Amy stepped inside. "So, are you ok?"
Sinead didn't speak, just kept gaping.
"She must have-" Amy started, then saw the cables ripped apart. "Oh, Dan! Sinead, I'm terribly sorry, it was-"
"I'll correct it." The Starling muttered monotonously, peering at the floor to fight back her anger. "Just don't... under no circumstances appear like that again!"
"All right, sorry!" Amy and Dan said in synchronously. "Shall we-?"
"No, I'll be fine!" Sinead interrupted, losing her patience. Fortunately the siblings understood it and left.
"What a pity, it was my best kick ever and it had to end that way..." She heard Dan talk to Amy on their way and let out a sigh. She had to admit that sometimes she wished her cousins disappeared for a day... or two. It wasn't that she didn't love them, but sometimes, to put it mildly, they got on her nerves. And inventions had always been the sensitive points of the Ekats after all.
She sat on her chair to restart her work, not knowing that her wish would once come true. Once really soon...
.-.-.
Location: Unknown
"Is the arena ready?"
"Yes, Sir!"
"The traps?"
"They are right where they have to be."
"Wonderful. Now, only my little puppets are missing." Came an evil laugh from under the ground.
.-.-.
Location: New York, USA
Hamilton Holt was stiff scared. He had faced so many enemies before, he had rushed with bullets swooshing inches away from his head, he had fought Tomas serum enchanted guys, stopped disasters and passed all his maths tests. But there was something none of the above could make him ready of. Jonah's fangirls. The apocalypse was about to come.
A girl with a 'Wizard took me under his spell!' T-shirt : she was the start of everything.
While Jonah was singing, that crazy chick somehow sneaked up to the stage and it was only Hamilton's self sacrifice that saved his friend from being hugged to death. Before she could have threw herself at the star, Hammer jolted to her and grabbed her wrist, which made her stop and scratch him with the long, sharp nails of her free hand.
Ugh, Jonah, you'll owe me a lot for this! He held back a yell of pain to avoid disturbing the performance, then caught the girl's other arm and crossing it behind her back, he led the furious maniac to his bodyguard colleague to take care of her and went back to his place. As he landed on his VIP seat next to Broderick Wizard, Jonah's father peeked up from his phone and nodded thankfully to him, then he returned to his daily routine: button-pressing.
The reflectors were moving with a crazy agility as Jonah danced and sang with his fans on the concert. With the pulsing lights blinding him, Ham tried to fix his attention on the surroundings of the stage to prevent any other attacks, but the more the small scar on his arm hurt, the weaker his concentration became - so much, that in the end, he found himself staring at the red line the girl's claws had drawn on his skin. From what he could see from the shadows racing up and down, the wound was surprisingly deep.
What kind of manicure did that freak have? Hammer wondered.
To stop the bleeding, he put a tissue or two on it, pressing it to the injured surface. As he touched it, the sound of his heartbeat fastened and got louder and louder, so that he couldn't hear anything, but the throbs.
Huh? He groaned and rose his seven fingers from the- Wait, seven fingers? Oh, no, this is a really evil trick, I am not that stupid! Even a Tomas knows that-
He rose his gaze to realize that he had double vision. He tightened his grip on the side of his seat, but it felt like that it was moving backwards with him, right behind the curtains of the VIP door.
"Mr. Wizard!" He cried for help, but everything got too distant... Too irrational.
The only realistic thing he percepted was the two firm hands that appeared on his broad shoulders.
"So, what do you think will happen to you, my dear friend?" Came a silky voice that sounded somehow familiar to him.
"I'll faint like Nancy when Madison's football found her head?" Hammer guessed.
"Oh, yes, good boy!" The person from the behind pushed a syringe into him. "Sleep well, tomorrow you will have a great day! A fatally great one..."
.-.-.
After the show
"Hamilton?!"
"Hammer?!"
"Buddy?!"
"Ham?!"
Jonah raced up and down the stage to find the boy, but no answer came. The people he asked said that they hadn't seen him either.
"Oh, c'mon, he can't have turned into dust!" Jonah frowned, then ran back to the VIP section. There, his father was still on his chair, buried in the world of his phone messages.
"Pops, have you-" Jonah turned to him, but no reply came, which - knowing the man - could have been considered normal, but that time he had a strange feeling racing in the form of a cold wave down his spine.
He poked his father. Still no reaction.
"Dad?" Jonah stuttered, shaking him softly. To his relief, letting out a big yawn, Broderick got awake. Massaging his neck, which was aching from the bad position it had been kept in for a while, he glanced up at his son, then realized what had happened.
"I... I can't imagine... I'd fallen asleep..." He muttered. "But I never do so... I..."
"It's ok. Anyway, I knew that I had to renew some of my boring songs..." Jonah sighed. "But getting back to the point, have you seen Hamilton? He isn't in his room or else..."
Broderick eyes widened. "The last time I saw him, he was fighting that girl that wanted to catch you on the stage. Then he sat next to me and... I am sorry, all the other events are a blur."
Jonah nodded, then his gaze wandered to the man's neck, then to the red dot on it.
"What's that?" He asked and leaned closer to him.
It was similar to a mosquito sting, but no lump had grown there. Like a mark a syringe needle leaves behind.
"Strange..." Jonah mumbled under his breath. "Dad, please go immediately to my personal doctor for some examination!"
Persuading Broderick wasn't an easy ride, but in the end, he succeeded. Then, he took out the phone he'd found in Hamilton's empty room from his pocket.
"The Command Center isn't too far. Maybe Ham went away to check them out."
Beep, beep.
No answer. Not for the sixth time.
"Just don't say that all the Cahills except for me died out! Maybe I should-"
"Mr. Wizard!" One of his staff members interrupted his thoughts. "Mr. Wizard, the interview with the Music TV had to be delayed by a day."
Jonah thanked for the information. "So a day. Right. That's enough time for a fast inquiry - the big guy is my responsibility after all." He turned to his assistant. "I gotta go somewhere, call my driver!"
.-.-.
Location: Cahill Command Center, USA
Thanks to his talented chauffeur, Jonah had arrived in front of the door of the Command Center in less then 3 hours. Pressing the button of the bell, he could imagine the tired face of his cousins and the joy they would feel for being disturbed at 4 in the morning or 5 - he had totally lost his time sense because of the lack of sleep. And then he still forgot to add the fact that he was about to state that Hamilton faded away.
However, neither Amy nor Dan or anyone inside opened the door.
"Well, if Dan is having a nap, not even a nuclear explosion is able to wake him up... But Amy!?"
Having waited for half an hour, failing to contact anyone, Jonah decided to break in. He took a deep breath of the fresh morning air and with all the lock picking knowledge he had - and was terribly proud of - he launched into working, just to be disappointed by the fact the door hadn't even been closed.
"Now, that's even stranger!" He entered the house. "Boo! Dan! Ames!"
"Too much silence..."
He turned on the lights, but nothing happened, so he walked up the stairs in total darkness to the bedrooms. They was no soul in them. He opened the wardrobe and found all the baggage inside.
"They conceivably didn't go for a vacation. Then why aren't they here?"
He made his way back to the hall, searching for any signs of kidnappers, but he found nothing, except for a big spider and a box of ice cream.
And then he heard it. A harsh scream came from the basement. Following the sound, he sneaked down to the source of it and stopped at a huge wooden door. It might have been broken out of its frame at least once and there was eerie light coming from under it.
"There's someone... being tortured..." Jonah gasped. "I must save her!"
With all the bravery he had, he kicked the door open and jumped into action.
.-.-.
"I did it! I did it! Yeeeesssss!" Sinead Starling cried, hopping up and down from happiness. It took her a day to fix what Dan had ruined, but all the efforts were worth it. Or at least that was what she thought before the history repeated itself or to be more specific, another idiot - that gangsta guy this time - felt the irresistible need to do the same as Dan did and make her poor life miserable. The only difference between the two actions was that while Dan landed on the cables, Jonah had found a better target: her.
"Ouch! You're insane!" Jonah Wizard heard the girl groan under him. "Are you intending to kill me?"
"I..." Jonah's jaw slacked as he recognized her. "I thought you were..."
"I was what?" Sinead fumed. Then, she noticed her invention or the thing left of it. "Oh, no!"
"I'm sorry, I wasn't gonna..." Jonah saw the sadness and desperation in her eyes and put his hand on her shoulder to comfort the girl. "You know, I'm not a pro of this Ekat stuff... But I bet you are and that you'll fix it fast so it... it will work again... Because nothing is a prob for someone like you..."
"Nice speach, bro, the chick won't kill you after all." He complimented himself in thought, but the tomato coloured face of Sinead tore him down.
"No prob? No prob? Idiot, I've been working on this for an eternity and... and you just come here, make it the equal of a hill of waste and say that it's no prob?" Only the black creature swooshing between her legs saved Jonah from a lethal slap.
"Hey, have you seen it?"
Their gaze circled around the lab in the pale light.
"It went away." Sinead declared, then returned to Jonah. "Getting back to you..."
"Wait, yo!" Jonah backed, right onto something...
Mrrrppp! Saladin looked at him indignantly. The message in his eyes were unmistakable: 'One more step on my tail and you've sealed your own doom!'
"Oh, sorry." Jonah muttered. He'd unintentionally made Sinead and a cat hate him the same day. That must have been a record or so!
"See, you are more destructive than a mixture of..." Jonah became lost at the next part of Sinead's sentence as some long-named compounds came, but he didn't dare asking her to repeat. "Anyway, why are you here?"
"Oh, yes..." Jonah got back from the daze of the pas few minutes. "I can't find Hamilton. So I came here to ask for help, but... Amy and Dan..."
Sinead rose an eyebrow.
"When was the last time you talked to them?" Jonah asked.
"This afternoon..."
"And after that? Haven't they told you anything about leaving for a while... or couldn't you hear any unusual noises... or... "
"I had been sitting down here, working." Sinead frowned. "And by the way, why- ?"
"When I came in, the door was open, this is how I got inside. I seeked everywhere, but excluding us, the whole house is empty." Jonah explained.
"No way!" Sinead bolted up to the control room of the CCC. It was where she could see the views of all the hidden cameras. She examined each computer screen one by one, but Jonah turned out to be right.
"Maybe they recorded something..." Jonah suggested, but she kept shaking her head rapidly.
"Something is wrong... I can't find the reports of the last 7 hours..." Sinead clicked on an icon. "It says that they were deleted."
That was when their gazes met. It had happened before. The kidnappings, then the blackmail... That time, it had taken the life of at least 5 people they loved.
"Ned... Ted..." Sinead muttered anxiously.
"They won't get hurt... no one will!" Jonah tried to assure both of them. "We'll stop whoever it is and..."
The beeping of the monitor interrupted him.
"What are you doing?" He asked hopefully.
"Me... nothing..." Sinead gasped. "But... someone is hacking us!"
Jonah saw nothing but the white arrow of the mouse flashing up and down. Although he was aware of that Sinead wasn't really a - as Pony called it - a cowboy, but he trusted her skills.
"Come on, girl!"
Sinead was fighting hard for control. However, she lost.
"No!" She pushed her head to the desk.
The screen turned black, the mouse disappeared and a horrific message turned up in the middle with the background of a nice forest.
The end is near.
(For further information: ask the ancestors.)
Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it! :D
Anyway, before I forget to say: I'm planning this to have longer chapters, so the updates, if I continue the story, will be a bit rarer...
Also, it can happen that you'll have the chance to read about some chars that were offically... erm not so alive... xD
But enough for spoilers today! ;)
See you later!