Chapter XIV

"Are you serious?! You and Sparx?" Tara said.

"I told you, his name is Brainwave and yes, we fell asleep on top of the mountain. We didn't even remember falling asleep!" Jaeda explained to her friends. She was describing last night to her friends in the cafeteria.

"It's wrong, though. Leaving your house with some guy," said Carter angrily.

"Aww, is somebody jealous?" Tara teased. She shook his arm and Carter yanked it away.

"No!…Well, maybe a little. I was gonna ask Jaeda to the Winter Dance, but it looks like a piece of equipment got there before me," he mumbled. Tara's mouth went straight down that it almost touched the floor.

"You've got a crush on Jaeda?!" she nearly screamed.

"No! I was going to ask her to go as friends," he defended himself.

"Okay, stop it," Jaeda refereed. "Carter, there's would be no way Brainwave could take me to the dance. So I'll go with you. And Tara, don't tease and jump to conclusions."

"Can we just pretend I didn't ask you yet? I wanted to ask you in private. You know, a bit more comfortable; no one teasing and making fun of you kind of private!" Carter gave a stare to Tara.

"All right, all right! I give up! I won't say anything. I promise," she said.

"Like I'm supposed to believe that," Carter said sipping is soda as he recalled the time Tara went around the school bragging about Jaeda's robot friend…boyfriend?

"So, are you two going out tonight?" Tara asked, changing the subject.

"Well, we were thinking on going to the top again. It might be a little more romantic now that we know we love each other." Jaeda was still bit uncomfortable saying that. She's had a few crushes in her life, but never one with a robot!

"Ooh! Jaeda's got a boyfriend, Jaeda's got a boyfriend…" Tara sang so no one else could hear her. Jaeda pushed her friend to make her stop and continued with her lunch.

Tara broke the silence by eating with her mouth full. "Stho, do foo fink he be able foo feat on yoo?"

"Huh?" Carter didn't understand a single word of that (as I'm sure the readers couldn't as well). Jaeda answered.

"No. I don't think there's any girl robots like him around here for him to cheat on me."

"Ah!" Tara gulped down her food. "Just curious. You know how I like to talk."

"I think we know by now, Tara," said Carter. Tara, irritated by the comment, threw a French fry at him.

"You be quiet!" she said.

Jaeda's day went by quicker than she had expected. It felt like only two minutes she was at school and now she was home. She threw her backpack down into the couch and walked over to her dad, going over some research papers. He had his fingers running through his hair. Jaeda bent down over him and kissed him on his forehead.

"Hey Dad. How's it going?" She grabbed an apple out of the refrigerator, took a bite out of it, and sat down at the table.

"Hi, Jaeda. Well, we ran some of the tests over again, and the results don't seem to be the same. It's strange though. We can't figure out what it is," he said tiredly. Jaeda was about to say something when Mike came running down the stairs. Jaeda looked up at him as he entered the kitchen.

"What's up, bro? Finally got out of hibernation?" she joked. Mike grabbed her arm.

"Come on, I need to talk to you," he said. Jaeda wanted to refuse, but Mike pulled her up and rushed her down into the basement. He pointed to Brainwave in his container. But instead of standing in it, like he usually did, he was on his hands an knees, coughing.

"I think there's something wrong with Sparx," he said. Jaeda rushed down and touched the glass on Brainwave's container. The gold and blue robot looked up at her with weak eyes.

"What's wrong?" she whispered so Mike couldn't hear.

Virus…

Jaeda's eyes went huge. She turned around to run back up the stairs, but Mike caught her arm. "Where are you going?"

"To get Dad. He can fix him."

"But what's wrong with him?"

Jaeda ignored him and ran up the steps and back into the kitchen to her puzzled father with Mike following behind.

"Jaeda?" he said as he looked up from his papers. "What's wrong? Where's the fire?"

"Dad, I think your computer downstairs has a virus. Sparx is sick!"

"What? Impossible! Robots can't get sick."

"Well, apparently, Sparx can," Mike said, backing up his sister. Dr. Scotts put down the papers and went into the basement to run a few diagnostics on Brainwave. He came back to his kids to give a report.

"Well, it's true. Someone hacked into the Labs' firewall and implanted a virus into Sparx. But it wasn't to kill Sparx or anything, it was just for the information we got on him."

"But, who'd do that?" said Mike.

"Hel-lo?" said Jaeda. "Anyone with information on alien life is bound to get a lot of money from it."

"Exactly!" George noted. "But the problem is that this is a non-point source type of virus. I can't locate where it came from."

"It's okay, Dad. Just make sure that Sparx gets well." Jaeda's eyes drooped.

"I'll try," he said, and went back down into the basement.

Well, forget tonight's date…

"Jaeda, were you talking to Sparx this morning?" Mike asked in a suspicious tone. Uh-oh. Was Mike able to fall for her lies?

"Yeah, was I too loud?" Bad question.

"Well, I sorta heard you, since the basement door was open, and I thought I heard you call him 'Brainwave'."

Busted, big time!

There was no way to lie to Mike about this. So she sighed and explained to him.

"Okay, don't tell anyone, but I can understand him, every word! He says his real name is Brainwave and that he was sent here just like how we send Rovers to Mars." She gave the rest of the story about the war on Cybertron and even the date they had the other night.

"You… and Brainwave… on the mountain… in the middle of the night?" Mike said slowly.

"We didn't really kiss at all; we only got as far as a hug," Jaeda defended herself.

"So, each word you're saying to me, everything…is the truth?"

"Yes, but you can't tell anyone! I'm afraid of what might happen to Brainwave and me!"

Mike paused for a second. He nodded his head. "Alright, but one condition: you clean my car twice a week for three months."

"What?!" Jaeda almost screamed. Mike drew a crooked smile across his face.

"Don't want to get in trouble with Dad? Then clean my car, starting now."

He gave her the keys to his Mustang and walked off.

"Make sure to vacuum!" he called from behind.

Jaeda grumbled, grabbed a sponge and towel from the bathroom and stomped off into the garage.

xXx

Author's Note: I'm working overtime with uploading all the chapters! There's 29, including the Epilogue D