Chapter 21—Help
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"What is it? Who's there?" Aunt Karina grumbled as I knocked on the front door of her home. I snuck out of the dorm room and made my way to her house. She's the only one I could trust with this.
"It's me, Aunt Karina," I told her.
"Jacob? What are you doing here so late?"
"I need to talk to you," I said. "Can I come in?"
"Might as well," she replied, opening the door.
"Nice pajamas," I commented when I saw her pajamas, which had pictures of a velocimorphed Infernus slug on them.
"If you say one word of this to Eli, you will be sorry," she threatened.
"Okay, okay," I assured her.
"Now, what is it you wanted?" she demanded.
I turned up the speakers on my Holo-Glasses and replayed the call.
"What does he have to back this up?" she asked.
I handed her the Glasses and played the video.
"Oh," she said simply. "Wait. Replay the end of the message."
I replayed the last dozen seconds for her.
"There is only one person I know of that acts that overconfident," she told me. "John Martin."
"Do we have any way of being sure it's him?" I asked her.
"No, we don't. Have you signed up for the competition?" she asked me.
"No, I haven't."
"Good. Don't. We can't afford to have this reaching anybody," she told me.
"What? I have to enter this competition!" I told her.
"No, you don't," she replied. "This needs to remain a secret."
"But if I don't do this, then the blackmailer can just use this against me again. It'll make him think I'm afraid of him," I explained "Can't you just trace the call or something? Find the source?"
"I can try, but not now," she replied. "If I can't find the source by the time registration ends, don't sign up for it."
"Fine," I muttered before grabbing my glasses and walking out.
The next day registration was held.
"Aren't you going to register yourself?" Luke asked me ten minutes before registration ended. I had been waiting for Aunt Karina to let me know if she found the source, but nothing so far.
"I'm not going to let this guy beat me," I told myself as I walked up to the registration desk.
"I'd like to register myself for the competition," I told one of the people at the desk. I told them my name and presented Speedy for them to register.
"Thank you for registering yourself. Your time for the qualifying round will be sent to your Holo-Glasses," the person told me.
"Thank you," I replied.
As I walked away I pulled down my Glasses and checked for my time. It would be in twenty minutes.
"When are you guys going for the first round?" I asked the others. For the competition we perform trick shots by ourselves and the judges give us scores. The highest scores move on to the next round.
"Thirty minutes," Mark said.
"Ten minutes," Luke replied.
"Forty minutes," Emma told us.
"Cool," I added. "Who else do you think signed up?"
"Well, I hope you didn't," a voice said from behind me.
"Hey there, Aunt Karina," I replied. "Does that mean you couldn't trace the call?"
She sighed. "You signed up for it, didn't you?" she asked me.
"Yes, yes I did," I said. "I'm not going to let this person bully me around."
"What are you two talking about?" Luke asked.
"Nothing," we replied at the same time.
"You need to pull out of the competition," Aunt Karina told me. "We can't afford the entire campus knowing about what you can do."
"No!" I snapped. "I don't back out of a challenge. To back out now would show me as a coward, and that would hurt the name 'Shane'."
"Back out of the competition," she told me. "Or else I will disqualify you."
"What will you say to disqualify me?" I asked. "You've got nothing against me."
"Oh, really?" she asked. "I still have that video. Either you back out, or I will use it to make sure the video doesn't reach anybody else."
"You would do that to me?" I asked her, taken aback. "You would ruin my trust in you?"
She looked me in the eye and I knew she was completely serious.
"Fine, then," I snapped at her. "Release the video. I'm not backing out of that competition." I walked away with me friends to the Arena to watch Luke's tryouts.