Hey! Cut to the chase, this chapter is a bit more active, and after this, the story starts coming together. I'd say this is approximately the halfway point. Without further ado, please enjoy, please comment, and I hope you have a good week :)
Chapter Ten
Protests
Angrignon Park
Montreal, Quebec
December 31
1230 hours
We talked for 5 hours about the notification. The one that told us there was a virus in China. After an hour, Erica had gone and collected my jacket because I was sweaty and it was -10 outside.
Now we sat there, silent, reading the message over and over, seeing if anything new popped out.
ALERT/ATTENTION
The message began. Nothing weird there.
COVID-19 confirmed. Found Wuhan China.
Still nothing weird. It didn't surprise me that the virus started there.
Safety precautions vital. Deadly virus.
It sent shivers down my spine. But at the same time, it was exciting. Erica zoomed in on her screen, then zoomed out, scanned it again, and then looked up at me.
"It's useless," She groaned.
"There's nothing to it," I cried.
"We can't wait though. We have to do something,"
"Something? What can we do if we have nothing to work on?"
"We have something. It started in China,"
"So you want to put me closer to a deadly virus?"
"That's not what I meant,"
"Why are you always so cryptic?"
Erica sighed, and then looked back at her phone.
"Fine. What did you have in mind," I asked her.
"Who do we know that lives in China?"
"My grandmother,"
"Someone other than your grandmother,"
"My grandfather,"
"Stop with your family. Someone who is an arms dealer, and lives in China,"
"I don't know,"
"Fine, I'll answer it for you. The Shangs,"
I tried to sort that out in my mind. It didn't help that the wind had picked up and my jacket had seemingly stopped working.
I glanced through a crack in the trees and saw a few teenage girls standing in a circle in ripped jeans and hoodies. All of them looked normal. As if winter didn't affect them. Erica noticed that I had lost my focus, so she turned around and looked at them too.
"Their Canadians," She said simply. "They like winter,"
One of them got hit with a snowball, and she screamed before turning around and whipping a snowball back at her unseen attacker. Erica snickered, and then turned her attention back to me.
"Shangs? No response?" she asked.
"You're telling me you think Leo Shang started this virus?"
"It's not impossible,"
"It's unlikely. China has a population of 1.398 billion,"
"That's your opinion. I think it's likely,"
"I'll think about it,"
Erica paused before continuing.
"I've been meaning to ask you this since we got to the chalet. Do you want-"
"I'm going to say yes, because you aren't going to be happy if you say no,"
"To go to China?"
"I wish I hadn't said yes…"
"I'm just joking," Erica said, laughing. "Do you want to go to the movies with me?"
I gaped at her. It was unlike Erica to ask someone that. I didn't know how to answer. I heard a twig snap somewhere from where we had come from, and when I looked over, I saw Sophia coming towards us. I glanced back at Erica, who was giving me a look that told me it was now or never. I knew I shouldn't, but I did it either way.
"Of course I'll go to the movies with you Erica!" I said in the happiest voice I could muster.
Sophia stopped in her tracks, and then turned around as Erica hugged me (Which was awkward because we were on different branches). I hugged her back, but I wish I hadn't. It only got my hopes up, and I knew that wasn't what she wanted.
She kept her eyes locked on the back of Sophia's head until she dropped out of sight. Then she grabbed my wrist, and slightly pulled me towards the opposite end.
We both started jumping and walking towards the other end.
"With luck, we'll make it there before she does," Erica whispered, landing silently from a jump.
I jumped after her, and landed with surprising agility.
"You're getting the hang of it!" Erica said.
I felt that weird sensation that I wanted her to say that, but at the same time, it was weird to actually hear her say it. So I didn't respond. Plus, I was in a state of mortality.
? ゚メᆪ?
"Quietly," Erica whispered to me.
I reached out and grabbed onto a branch above me for support. Then I stepped down onto the worn out path on the ground. I heard Sophia coming up behind us, and knew we didn't have enough time.
I could tell that Erica knew it as well. She glanced warily from the spot where she was standing to the direction that Sophia was coming from. I could practically see the gears in her brain working. She was in a one track mind, and she wouldn't be out of it until she had accomplished her idea.
She pulled a rolled up piece of string from her jacket pocket, and wrapped it around the limb of a tree. She pulled it tight across the path and tied it to another tree on the opposite side. Then she cut off any extra string there was and put it back in her pocket. She nodded, but looked somewhat upset.
"Let's move," She muttered, grabbing my upper-arm and pulling me away from the path. We broke out into a run, and it wasn't more than ten seconds later that we heard a cry of pain behind us.
"It's not going to hold her," Erica said, rounding a corner onto a street named 'Benedict'.
"Then why'd you bother?" I asked her, incredulous.
"Because we can outsmart her,"
She ran between two buildings, catching me off guard. I ran into the wall of one of the buildings, and my nose started bleeding, but Erica kept running.
I didn't see how we were going to outsmart Sophia. She could just follow our footprints, which I assumed she would do. But Erica had something else in mind. Before I knew what she was doing, we had run headlong into the biggest crowd of people I had ever seen. And I've been in huge crowds before. As Erica pulled me along, I heard snippets of what people were saying. One woman was screaming about climate change, a little kid farther along was crying because he couldn't see anything, there were several teenagers holding up posters with words like 'The future is in our hands!' or 'Climate change is real'. We fit in perfectly. Every one looked determined, everyone was running on being pushed around, and a fair amount of people had injuries like bloody noses. And we were concealed perfectly. With our snow gear on, and surrounded by people, we looked like every other person there.
"Where are we?" Erica asked, coming to an abrupt halt.
I took my phone out of my pocket and opened Google Maps. We were no longer on our cottages property, or the skiing hill resort, or any of the other winter activities areas. Instead, we had gone directly south, and we were now in a huge park near the base of Montreal.
"Angrignon Park," I told Erica. She nodded, and then set off through the people again. I hadn't been in many protests, but out of the ones I had been in, this was the craziest.
We were shoved from side to side, yelled at, and within minutes I knew we would have a considerably hard time getting out. But Erica kept going forwards. I reached out and grabbed her hand for fear of being separated, and she took it back. I was fairly surprised, but I didn't let it get the better of me.
At one point I thought I saw the prime minister of Canada, but then when I told Erica, she told me I was seeing things. After what felt like several hours, we were pushed out of the crowd and into fresh air. I was relieved to have finally gotten out of there. But I knew that Erica's plan wasn't over.
"See that tall building over there?" She asked, pointing south. There was a super tall building with smoke coming out the top.
"I do," I replied.
"Good. Tonight, we are going to break in and see what they're up to,"
"Why do I usually want to break into a building?"
"To get information I guess?"
"That's right. And that building there, that's the CROATOAN headquarters,"
