Nigel was in the ship's brig viewing his prisoners. How trusting they were, how naive. A thin smile rose on the bald boy's face. "Teenagers" he said aloud. He had never liked teenagers very much.
Risa Ward, Hayden Upchurch and Connor Lassiter, as well as the boy's parents and brother, were all prisoners. Galactic Command would be pleased. Just as he was about to leave, a weird-looking alien door whizzed open. Two small flying robots that looked like purple toasters carried a girl between them.
Number 1 was about to fuss at his tinny mechanical helpers. They were under strict orders: grab the targets and disappear before anyone asked any questions. They definitely weren't supposed to pick up another one.
Then the head unit of the toaster robots emerged from the the rear. He saluted with one of his tiny metallic hands and handed Number 1 a letter. He opened the letter and sighed.
Apparently things had changed.
Number 1 gazed at the cell block to see where she would go. That was the only bad thing about these light cruisers:the brig was so very small. He had put the three teenagers in one cell and the parents in the other. He didn't want to put her with Upchurch and the lovebirds and the letter said they want the girl delivered alive, so the parent's cell was out of the question (the cell the parents were in , was attached to an air lock which he planned on shooting them out of later. He could risk it, but a certain incident regarding a "blow up the engines button" came to mind) so that only left one choice...
Chad Dickson, despite his doubts, had made it into the Galactic Kids Next Door…well, he made the go-between agent position. His job was to go between Moon Base and Galactic Head Quarters and be an ambassador of sorts.
"Well, now his job is to keep the middle cell's bed warm." Nigel thought to himself. He had replaced the traitor after a series of tests proved who was the better operative.
The girl could go in there for a bit. The cell was tiny, but it could fit another person in there.
A high-tech communicator began to ring on his visor. A holographic message flashed across the corner of his vision, "INCOMING TRANSMISSION".
Nigel frowned. Already? He thought he had more time.
Out of all the species in the universe, Humans were among the weakest. That's why Number 1 had this nifty little wrist control, his holo-visor and the little toaster helpers flying around. The Galactic Kids Next Door takes care of their operatives. Nigel really did appreciate that , and he truly would do anything for them.
Pausing for a second, he sighed and looked into Chad's cell. The older boy was laying on his cot staring at the celling. A wave of doubt swept over Nigel. This wasn't right, the Kids Next Door on Earth never would have allowed what was about to happen...
Number 1 pushed that bit of weakness away. This thing had to be done. There was no other option. Number 1 turned away from the cells and began to walk towards the bridge. The little flying droids weren't following him anymore. Hmm, that was odd...
Miracolina was in a semi-conscious state. One minute she was taking a walk in her neighborhood an hour after her shift at the Soup Kitchen, the next she felt a sting that she knew was a tranq dart and now she was here, being dangled above the ground of someplace very weird.
Some type of boat? That was her first guess until she heard the engines ignite. She was finally staring to wake up when she heard a voice.
"Miracolina? Miracolina, is that you?"
She looked around to see a row of cells and a metal hallway. In one of the cells was Risa Ward.
"Risa?" She asked sluggishly, rubbing her eyes. Miracolina had met Risa(and the infamous Akron AWOL Connor Lassiter)only a handful of times since the All Saints Uprising, but neither of them were even close to forgettable.
All of a sudden Miracolina felt the hard smooth ground of the ship's brig as the droids holding her dropped her with an audible thud. The droids left her and became busy hovering around the cell on the far left. She stumbled to the cell where Risa was, shaking off the drowsiness on the way.
"Are they Parts Pirates?" Miracolina asked.
"Aliens." Risa said bluntly. The last 48 hours had been crazy, even by her standards.
"Aliens?" Miracolina asked in disbelief, "Are you sure they're not just—"
"Aliens." Risa said, a little more firmly.
"But how? The boy who was in here was as human as you or me."
"Who knows?" A voice said from deeper inside the cell. The figure came a little bit closer into the light. He had curly blonde hair and a crooked smile hung on his lips. "All I know is that our extraterrestrial hosts haven't given us any food in the last two days. Man, for a high-tech space craft the service here sucks." It was Hayden Upchurch himself, laughing at danger as usual.
"Is Lev…?" Miracolina couldn't help herself but ask. After all, if they had Hayden and Risa aboard, they must have Lev on board too.
Hayden shook his head. "Sorry, I guess our new alien overlords have a height requirement. Nope, just me, Connor, Risa and now you."
Miracolina smiled at the mention of Lev's height, relieved that he wasn't on this ship too. "Connor?" she called into the cell.
Hayden leaned against the cell wall. "Forgot to mention, he's out for the moment. But you can leave a message if you'd like."
Risa gave Hayden a tired-looking glance.
"Where is he?" Miracolina asked, hoping the answer wasn't something horrible.
"In the lab, every couple of days they take me or Risa or Connor out and hook us up to some type of headband. Then after five hours they bring us back down here."
Miracolina was about to ask more questions, but two of the little flying robots picked her up by both arms again and raised her off the ground.
"Miracolina!" Risa shouted, trying to reach from the cell door to snatch at one of the toaster droids.
"Tell the bald kid that I want some Spam!" Hayden called after her, earning a dirty look from Risa.
"What? A guy's gotta eat."
Miracolina noticed from over her right shoulder that the other droids were grabbing another one of the prisoners. He was a blonde boy maybe a year or two older than herself. He had blonde hair like Lev's, but his face was harder and he had fierce green eyes instead of Lev's baby blues. Her droids allowed the boy's to pass him as they flew up and up. The droids carrying her followed him and she desperately wondered where they were going. She and the blonde boy were separated for a bit, but then joined back together in front of a large metal door. The boy was in chains on a moving platform.
The boy looked up at Miracolina and gave a small cocky smile. For the first time, she got a good look at him. He was covered in bruises and scratches, with torn clothes that must have once been very cared for. The rings under his eyes showed that he hadn't been able to sleep very much. His wrists were black and blue from straining against handcuffs and she had to wonder what he'd been through. Before she could try to talk to him, a droid got between them and the platform moved through a door.
She was led to a gallery overlooking a pitch black room. The little bald boy from the cells stood in the middle of the room.
The boy, who was wearing a yellow visor, cleared his throat and began to address an unseen audience.
"Earth. A class G planet. The only one in it's locality capable of sustaining carbon based life due to it's abundance of water and atmosphere. Home to over 8.7 million different life forms, the planet's dominant species is human, of which their are approximately 7 billion. Of that number, more than 3 quarters are over the age of 13. In other words... adults. That's why I have no choice but to do this."
No choice? No choice for what? What was this little bald boy going to do just because a lot of the population was over the age of 21? What was going on in this insane asylum? Miracolina began to struggle against her robot guards, but they were stronger than they looked.
There was a wet squishing sound. Did he just pick his nose? He reached for something in the dark.
Suddenly a bright light shone in the pitch black room with the boy from earlier shouting from a platform in the middle.
"No! My family's there! Your family! Our friends!" The little boy turned to the blonde teenager, who was shackled using some type of laser cuffs. It was then that Miracolina decided she had indeed been kidnapped by aliens. The younger boy almost looked sorry for a minute.
"It's ruled by adults. Infested. Too far gone."
Infested by adults? This was like a children's story gone rotten. Miracolina thought of the her room back in the Cavenaugh Mansion filled with all those movies and books about the evil adults and the plucky young hero who had to stand up against authority. This time it appeared that the plucky young hero was planning doomsday.
The blond-haired boy was still talking.
"What about Sector V? Hoagie, Kuki, Wallabee and Abigail. Abby would never let you do this!"
It was hard to see from so far off, but the bald little boy's resolve to do whatever terrible thing he was going to do started to waver. Even from up there she saw the doubt and sadness in his eyes. For a moment she thought that there might be some hope, to talk some sense into him, to do something, but then the first computer screen lit up. A bluster of chatter filled up the room as a million screens and voices shouted from over their heads.
"Do you need a reminder of where this one's loyalties lie?"
"This one reeks of adult!"
"Who was leading your tech department while I was on Earth? Numbuh Moron!?"
"Enough!"
They were weird and distorted voices, but they were definitely young, definitely children... Children could be so cruel sometimes and now the fate of the human race was in the hands of a bunch of alien children?
The blond-haired boy was still trying to talk the bald little boy down. "Don't do it, Nigel! This isn't what the Kids Next Door is about!"
The blonde boy tugged on his chains. A great and terrible yellow light shone down brightly, but when he pleaded for his planet's safety for the last time the light switched off with an angry rumble.
"THE DECISION IS NIGEL UNO'S!" a deep booming voice from overhead rumbled angrily. The little boy in the visor was crying now. Miracolina felt sorry for him for just an instant. She knew the feeling of duty that you didn't want to do but felt you had to all too well.
The boy stood at attention and saluted. "Galactic Kids Next Door rules!" Nigel Uno took his snot—smeared finger and jammed it into the console. To Miracolina this seemed like a gross and childish gesture, but to all of us, I think we all know what it means...
The Galactic Kids Next Door are coming.
Zero help us all...