Huge congrats to ShyMusic and Rodrigo for answering correctly last chapter! Bob threw a teddy bear at the robbers.

Thanks to Dirtkid123, Lady Cougar-Trombone, LRW (a bit of Douglas is in this one ;) ), AllAmericanSlurp and Yuki F. Karasu for the reviews! Much appreciated, guys!

Okay, things didn't work out as well as I'd hoped to for the big 50th. The original plot decided to disintegrate spectacularly into storylines for the next two chronicles, and we're left with something that's much smaller in comparison. BUT, there's still some parts in here that you guys might like.

Please enjoy!

Episode Tag to: Under Siege


Chronicle #050

"Rogue"

04/05/15

9:18 PM

After hearing about my arm going haywire and the mess I unintentionally caused recently (because really, if you think about it, that was Douglas' fault), Big D decided that it would be a good idea to start implementing emergency drills in case something bad does happen. Because he's overseas and couldn't organize the first one himself, he, Douglas and the sibs had a closed conference about it some nights ago. Usually, I would take that as an offense, but this time I didn't, for several reasons.

One, because she's in charge of the security on the island, Perry had to be included in the meeting. I only took that as meaning that it would go awkwardly, especially with her crush on Douglas and all – and it seemed like it did, if Adam's, Bree's, Chase's and Douglas' reactions after the said meeting were anything to go by.

Two, I've been a bit preoccupied with interesting conversations I've been having with Kerry lately. Yeah, they're not the good kind of interesting. It started about three days ago, a day after she left the Academy with the loot she thought she was going to get away with. I received a call from an unknown number. Most of the time, I don't answer when I don't know who's calling, but out of curiosity, I picked up. "Hello?"

"Listen to me, you traitor," she spat on the other end of the line. "You're going to regret everything that you did."

"Kerry?" I said. "Wait. How'd you know my number?"

"I keep my eye on my enemies, Dooley, so if I were you, I'd be very much afraid."

At first, I just frowned at my phone. Then, realizing where she was probably calling from, I grinned. "I see you've been allowed phone privileges," I noted cheekily. "How's the law been treating you nowadays?"

"Crack all the jokes you want, but I'm going to get out of here, and I'm going to come after you."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm serious," she insisted.

"You do know that if you do that, people will know it was you. They're gonna catch you, and you're going to go back there."

"Who said I'm targeting you first?" she said.

I hitched my eyebrows at that. "What, you're going after my family?" I asked, chuckling. "I mean, I know you're super ticked off at me right now, and I know you think you can handle them, but I'm not so sure how good of an idea it is to go after bionic people, Kerry. You're talking about the big dogs here."

"Please. I'm not stupid," she scoffed. "You have to remember, though, that I know about your little gerbil. Yeah. I'd start keeping an eye on him from now on."

I laughed. "Okay, first of all, Pascal was a hamster, and second, he's been dead for about a year and a half now," I said.

"You're lying."

"Nope." I shrugged. "Although, if you want to check our backyard, feel free to do so. That's if you don't mind being charged trespassing, of course."

She was quiet for a moment. "Well… I know another one of your pressure points. Janelle. With you being there all the time, how are you going to protect your girlfriend?" she asked.

"Actually, we broke up weeks ago," I said. "That doesn't mean you can take your anger out on her, though, but then instead of me, you'd be dealing with her family. Just a fair warning, her uncle is a great lawyer, so maybe you wouldn't want to do that either."

"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

"Hm, no. Not really."

I heard some noise coming from her end of the line. Then, she said, "I will get out of here. You will regret it."

After the line went dead, I just stared at my phone and then shrugged.

Apparently, Kerry didn't think that the courtesy call was enough because Friday, she sent me a threatening letter. She said something about 'You don't know who you're dealing with' and 'You might be with powerful bionic people, but don't think for a moment that you're as strong as them,' which was actually more hurtful than it was threatening. She then ended the letter with a sweet 'I can make it so that they wouldn't know it was me.'

I seemed to have poked a sleeping bear by turning Kerry in, but I couldn't just let her get away with what she was doing. It was wrong, and if anything she only has herself to be upset with. She let herself get caught red-handed. Not my fault.

Anyways, I wasn't very concerned about it because of the third reason. Ever since the sleepwalking incident, I haven't gotten much sleep. It wasn't because I was worried that I'd go rebel on everyone again, although I do think about that from time to time. It was more because of that new arm capsule that Douglas made for me. It's so uncomfortable. It's a bit heavy, so it feels like I'm lugging around a mini-anchor. It also takes up space on the already small couch that I sleep on. It overheats most of the time, so I'd get waken up because it would feel like an iron was pressing down on me.

It's just problematic all over.

It wasn't so good either that, even if they didn't include me in the drill planning, Douglas, Adam, Bree and Chase wanted me to help out for our first practice yesterday. They had me running around with them checking different things, like the hydroloop, the escape pods, the lockdown system at the dormitories, the panic rooms, which I didn't even know we had. I dozed off several times while we were doing that. You would think that the four of them would understand that I needed to sit this one out, but then they said I needed to be involved because it was me who made all these things necessary in the first place.

By sundown yesterday, I've mastered the rare bionic ability of walking around half-functioning with my eyes closed.

I barely caught anything that they told me. What I remembered during the short briefing an hour before the drill was that there would be some kind of a tour around the island to show the students where they could go in times of real emergency and that that would be followed by a real life simulation (no gadgets, just real people) of an intrusion. I also remembered about one of us being picked as the evil mastermind for that simulation because I made a special effort to open my eyes and look at everyone else.

Suffice it is to say that the five of us eyeing each other suspiciously – or, in my case, groggily – was an interesting sight.

Because I'm part of the student body, I was supposed to do the whole nine yards of getting to know all of the rooms and what to do. I was also supposed to stay for the simulation and participate, but I was so tired that I just couldn't do it. After filing into the Training Center with everybody, I holed away in a small corner while Douglas and my siblings were giving their drill intro. I tried to stay awake. Really, I did, but it just wasn't happening. I don't know for how long I was snoozing, but I was woken up by my own snoring. I guess it was pretty loud, because when I opened my eyes, everybody was looking at me. Most of them were either surprised or confused. Some were laughing. A few, like Bree, looked offended.

I guess I cut into her speech, and she wasn't happy about that.

I barely survived the tour. Barely, because halfway through it I've had enough. I separated from everybody else to grab a pillow from the quarters before going to a spot on the island I knew no one would find me. I thought about bringing the arm capsule with me, just to be safe, but then it would've just defeated the purpose, so turning off my bionics it was. It wouldn't go haywire if it wasn't on in the first place, right?

After a pretty long walk, I reached my destination – only to be surprised by Chase who sat behind a small panel of computers, watching everything on a screen closely.

Apparently, I had surprised him, too, because he looked up at me with widened eyes as he stood up. "What—How did you find me so quickly?" he asked. "The simulation's only been going on for five minutes!"

I closed the door behind me. "I wasn't looking for you. I'm trying to get some sleep," I told him. Glancing at the screens and seeing what he was looking at, I smirked, "So you got the bad guy role, huh?"

Chase sighed. "Yeah, but you found me so I guess my plan was a fail," he said. He swiveled his chair around to face me. "The simulation's over."

Thinking over it, I responded, "Well, how about we look at this as me being an accomplice? That good? Okay."

Chase's eyebrows wrinkled. "But Mr. Davenport said I had to terminate once—"

"Oh, come on, Chase, just give us both a break here?" I said, halfway to the comfortable couch sitting in the dark.

Chase seemed to weigh out the situation before saying, "You do remember that finding the intruder would give you points towards your rank, right? By passing on this, you're saying no to getting bumped up?"

I walked over to the couch and got situated. "Honestly, you can offer me a Lamborghini right now and I'd still choose sleep over it," I said. I cracked an eye open to look at him. "That's not on the table, right?"

Chase smiled. "No."

I nodded, and then went back to trying to sleep.

Soon, I heard the chair swiveling back around towards the control panel, followed by the clicking of the keyboard.

It didn't seem like it was long after I fell asleep that I was woken up by something slamming on the desk. Looking up, I saw Chase looking back at me apologetically. "Sorry," he said.

"Mm."

Chase huffed. "They're getting too close," he said. "They're going to find us here soon."

I sighed, not opening my eyes. "Who's coming?" I asked.

"Adam, Era, Charlie and Spin."

"You have your phone?"

"Yeah?"

I held out my hand. "Toss it here."

Chase seemed to hesitate, because it was a while before I felt his phone land onto my side. After picking it up, I opened my eyes to dial Adam's phone number and then closed my eyes again. I cleared my throat, and then waited for Adam to answer. "Chase?" he said.

"No, Adam. It's Leo," I said. "Listen—"

"Are you getting sick or something?" he interrupted. "Why does your voice sound like that?"

"Never mind it. Listen," I said, "have you seen Bree? Chase and I had been looking for her."

"No. The last time I saw her was after I left with my group to prepare for the search." He gasped. "Oh, it's Bree, isn't it?"

"I don't know. Is it? You think it's Bree?" I asked, smirking at Chase.

"Yeah! She's the only one I haven't gotten in contact with!"

"You know, you're probably right," I said. "Where are you guys now?"

"Heading to the back of the island."

"Oh, okay. We're coming there," I said. "Hey, by any chance, do you see any super speed trail? That should let us know where Bree would be."

"Um…"

They stopped, Chase mouthed.

"You guys see any speed trails? No? Yeah, Leo. No."

"She must not be there then. Chase and I would be heading towards the cafeteria to look."

"Okay. Maybe we can join you guys."

"Yeah, sounds great. We'll wait there," I said. Then, we both hung up. "Can you turn off the lights with that?" I asked Chase, nodding to the panel.

"Yeah."

I tossed his phone back to him. "Call Bree and tell her you've been looking for me, and then switch off all of the lights in the island in the middle of your conversation. Then end the call."

Chase narrowed his eyes at me, smiling knowingly. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you've done this before," he noted.

"No, we've just seen something like this in a movie before. Remember that one we saw last year, with—"

"Oh, yeah," he said, nodding. "The one that had—"

"Yep. With the guys and the girls at the—"

"Place? Oh, okay. Now I got you," Chase laughed. He dialed a number. A few moments later, he said, "Bree? Yeah, hey. Where are you guys? …No, I know where Adam is. He's coming over to meet me. …Me? You thought it was me? I thought it was you! …No, no. Okay, fine, but I called because I wanted to ask if you've seen Leo. He wandered off, and now I have no idea where he is. …No, I haven't checked the quarters. Maybe I could go—" Click. "Oh. That is not good. …Yes, I'm okay. I'm heading there—" He placed his phone back down to the side of the desk after switching it off. "Well, that takes care of Bree."

"That should buy you enough time," I commented. "If it works out, you'll have them chasing after each other."

"Yeah, it should. Thanks for the help," Chase said.

"So you got this?"

"Oh, yeah. I got this," Chase said with a villainous grin.

"Okay. Just keep it down, Mr. Darkness. I still need to get some sleep," I said before turning my back on him and resuming where I had left off. Before I could, though, I asked, "Did you guys really think I was rebelling?"

"When?" Chase asked.

"Last Wednesday."

"Oh," he said. "Well, yeah. We thought it at first."

"Why?"

"I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "I guess that's why it didn't make sense."

I smirked. "It's not because you guys thought I was fed up with you or anything, right?"

"No."

"Or is it because you guys were fed up with me?"

He didn't answer.

I turned around and stared at him incredulously. He stared guiltily back. I raised my eyebrows at him. "You know what…"

The serious expression on his face broke as he laughed. "Leo, I'm just messing with you!" he said. "We didn't think that! We'll never think that."

I glared at him.

"No, seriously. We'd never think bad of you just because we want to get rid of you, trust me," Chase said. He shrugged. "You've known us for years. Has that been the way we operate?"

"No."

"Okay then," he said before swiveling back to the computer.

I eyed him suspiciously a bit longer then turned my back on him again to try to go to sleep.

And sleep I did. It turned out to be the best one I had in a while. Evidently, because I didn't even know when the whole thing ended. I woke up this morning feeling much better. When I caught up with Chase during lunch time earlier, he told me that he made his escape after we finished talking last night because Adam's and Bree's teams got a little too close for comfort. He left me behind because he said he didn't want to bother me again.

You should have seen the guy when I talked to him. He was so happy because as it turned out, no one caught him. It was good, he said, that over all, the students did everything they were told to do in the case of an actual break-in and that as far as he was concerned, they all remained safe during the simulation. It was bad, however, that nobody found him. Well, at least for Adam and Bree it was bad, because it meant that they had to hash out their skills as mentors, especially since it will be their task to protect the others. To Chase, though, it didn't really matter. He was just feeling the 'bad boy' cred he said it gave him.

Since I wasn't able to join in this time, I have a feeling that I'd be required to join in the next time we have an emergency prep. I wouldn't mind, as long as I'm not restless like this week. Maybe I won't be if I'm able to get Douglas to make some modifications on this hassle of a capsule. Hopefully points towards ranks would be offered again next time because I think I can ace this find-the-perp test.

Oh, if only they knew the things that I know about this island…

Signed,

Leo Francis Dooley

04/06/15

12:01 AM

The Bree Chronicles


In Under Siege, Kerry took an object that, in the context of their conversation, clearly belonged to Adam. What was it?

And here's a little extra question: Why is this series of entries called The A-Bionic Chronicles? Along with the answer next chapter will come a little trivia that I haven't shared with you guys. Comes with something nice-like, too, for one of the people who would give the correct response. ;) Maybe.

Reviews and answers are much appreciated! Very excited for you guys to see what's coming up in the three remaining entries!