Chapter Nineteen

Friends

Li Ming's Room

Wuhan China

January 13th

1230 hours

Li Ming brought Charlotte and I into the building we had landed on.

Charlotte and Li Ming instantly hit it off. I just followed behind them as we descended down the long winding stairs until we reached the first floor.

"Be quiet." Li Ming told us before opening the door from the stairwell to the lobby. "The whole crew is asleep except the night guard, which I am not on."

Then she cracked open the door and stepped into a dark room. I couldn't see anything, but I could feel Charlotte's hand holding mine so that nobody got lost. I shut the door behind us, and we all pressed up against the wall. Charlotte started walking, so I followed. We went around a corner, and then another corner, and then I saw lights ahead of us. An elevator. We sped right past it. Into another hall, and then Li Ming stopped. Pulled a key out of her sweater pocket and opened a door. Silently, we entered. Once we were all safely inside, Li Ming closed the door and turned on the lights.

We were in a pretty but empty room. There were two beds, one couch, and two lounge chairs. A tv, a Nintendo Switch set on the table beside it. The floors were carpeted with extremely soft fabric dyed blue. There was a single washroom with a pretty tiled floor and a floor to ceiling, wall to wall length mirror. If Li Ming had been using this room before now, there was no indication of habitants. No clothes, books, or bags were anywhere in the room. It was spotless, and only the Switch showed signs of people.

"Is this your room?" I asked her.

"Sort of. Only on missions I stay here, but I have my own house deeper in the city. Since we are on a mission, I'm staying here!" We'll get your stuff tomorrow, for now, choose a bed and get a controller and we can play games until morning!"

I went straight for the couch, not risking the beds, and grabbed a controller from the console on my way by.

We were all deciding a game when someone knocked on the door. Li Ming looked at us, and then pointed at the ground. Charlotte and I both got down and under the beds. Li Ming turned off the Nintendo, and then made a good show of just waking up from sleeping. She went to the door and opened it.

"It's me," I heard someone whisper. Next second, Erica had entered the room, and closed the door behind her. Li Ming returned to her bed, and turned on the Switch again.

"You get the last controller, Erica." Charlotte said, and pointed to the red controller sitting on the table.

Erica looked warily at it, and I cringed. "I'm not sure if I should -" Erica started.

"Oh don't be silly," Li Ming said. "Get the controller and play the game with us."

Erica took a cautious step towards the table and plucked it up. Then she went to one of the chairs and sat down. I looked over my shoulder at her and grinned.

She rolled her eyes at me, and then looked to the screen.

"We'll start simple," Li Ming said, scrolling through the games. "Mario Kart."

I groaned, and to my surprise so did Erica.

Once the game was on, we fought over who would be which characters like I had always done with my Dad. Eventually I chose Link. And since I'd chosen him, I chose an all Hyrule themed vehicle. Then we fought over the location, and once we'd finally decided upon Flower Cup, we could start.

I was determined I was going to win. But as the timer started counting down to start, I became more nervous. And once it got to two seconds, I could almost feel Erica's determination behind me. Zero seconds. I pressed the gas. But Erica and Li Ming were gone, shooting across the road, leaving me in fifth place.

"How the heck did you do that?" I asked them, flying through an item box.

"It's a classic move," Erica said. "Everyone knows it. At two seconds, depress the gas. It gives you a head start."

I took the info and put it into my strangely small memory pocket.

For several hours we argued and laughed and won and lost games. The sun was almost up when we finally passed out with exhaustion. But not before I turned to Erica and said,

"You need to teach me how to play video games the way you do. I used to think I was good until you showed me up."

She laughed and said, "It's a deal, Smokescreen."

And then blackness took over my thoughts.

At noon, I woke up and found Erica and Li Ming to be gone.

Charlotte was holding the console in her hands playing a game alone. I pulled my phone from my pocket and noticed I had a hundred notifications to check up on.

Zoe was going insane, trying to figure out where the heck I was. My parents had the usual questions - how I was doing, where was I, when will my next vacation be and of the sort. Strangely, Mike hadn't texted me. And Erica had.

I opened Erica's, and saw that she'd sent the latitude and longitude of her location. I was going to turn to Charlotte and tell her that we needed to go find her, but Charlotte was already talking.

"She went to the place where the virus was suspected to have started. Li Ming brought her. They've been gone for about an hour. They'll be back soon."

"Where did they go?"

"A market. I don't know. They didn't tell me."

I could have sworn annoyance passed over her face. But then it was gone.

"Well what do you want to do?" Charlotte asked me, and placed the Switch on the bed beside her.

"I want to go investigate. I want to be part of the mission too." I replied.

"Don't we all," Charlotte muttered. "There's not much we can do, but we can go out and just try to pick up info from around the city."

"Sure." I said. I got off the couch, and twenty minutes later Charlotte and I left the room. We walked straight past everybody as if it were a normal day. Charlotte in ripped baggy mom jeans and a tie-dyed crop top, me in cargo shorts and a Beatles t-shirt. Totally normal spyware. But nobody stopped us from leaving the building. Once we'd safely passed through the gates and rounded a few corners, Charlotte handed me a baseball cap and sunglasses. I put them on, and she followed with her own. Then she pulled two paper masks from her pocket and we put those on. With our faces covered, we headed into the streets. Just two casual tourists, window shopping and sightseeing.

"The masks aren't just for face covering," Charlotte told me as we passed an asian grocery store. "They also protect us from the virus." I gave her a dead look even though I knew she was only saying it for the sake of the people around her.

"I really want to buy kimchi." I said, stopping at the window of the grocery store to look in.

"Not now George,"

I whirled around, surprised to hear her calling me by my code name.

Charlotte grinned under her mask.

Thirty minutes later we found ourselves outside the same store, not having found out anything about the virus.

"Well so much for that," Charlotte complained.

"We got exercise. Erica and Li Ming are probably back by now. We should go back."

But as we turned to take the back street to the Headquarters, I heard someone call my name behind me.

"Ben? Is that you?"

I turned around to find a girl standing behind us, her face concealed below a homemade cloth mask and designer sunglasses. Her black hair was so much shorter than when I'd last seen her. I smiled even if she couldn't see it. Charlotte stood in a casual position, but I could tell she was ready to attack if need be. But I only approached the girl.

"It is me," I said. "I'm surprised to see you, Jessica."

She peeled off her sunglasses to reveal her bright brown eyes.

"It's a long story." She grumbled. Then she looped arms with me and started walking. She had towered over me the last time I'd seen her. Now I stood several inches taller than her.

Charlotte followed behind.

"I'm the third wheel I see," She chuckled.

"Who's that?" Jessica asked, pointing her sunglasses at Charlotte.

"Charlotte Garcia," Charlotte answered. "Who are you?"

"Jessica Shang." Jessica shrugged. Charlotte stopped though. And her mouth fell open, her mask stretching. "It's a name. Never heard of one?"

"You - Your Leo Shang's daughter,"

"You could say that. I don't see him as a father figure anymore though."

"Benjamin Ripley, you have some explaining to do." Charlotte said to me, no hint of kindness in her voice.

"Dude, chill," Jessica said. "Ben and I are friends. If he hasn't told you yet, I'm taking it as you haven't known him for long."

"A few months."

"We all have stories to tell, I take it?" I said, and pulled my phone out of my pocket. With a few discrete maneuvers, I'd texted Erica out location. Then I asked Jessica if there was a field nearby that we could sit at.

She led us to a small triangle of land in the middle of an intersection across the road from where we'd been.

"One at a time," I said after we'd all sat. "I'll start with my story."

So I told Charlotte the story of how I knew Jessica. And by the time I'd finished, Erica and Li Ming had arrived. So Erica and Jessica pitched into my story.

Charlotte had gone next. The story of how she'd worked for the enemy, and then switched. Jessica had gone stiff for the whole story. Li Ming hadn't, so I took it as Erica had already filled her in. Then Jessica went.

"My dad was in Canada a month or so ago. And he returned home, and then scooped up my mother and I in his grip and brought us here. He never gave us a reason. Said it was urgent. And then a week later, the pandemic broke out. Now I'm stuck here, with no one to talk to, nothing to do. And then you guys show up."

Erica glanced at me, her request clear in her eyes. Convince Jessica about her father being the creator of the virus.

"It's no mere coincidence that we're here at the same time," I started. "We found some evidence we wanted to check out. But that's for later. For now, do you have any idea why your dad is here?"

I would have jumped right into it, but Jessica was smarter than that.

"I have a suspicion. I don't know though. I hate my father. I can think of hundreds of things he's done to make me hate him. And this time, he's made me think he created the virus."

I blinked. "Well that was easy."

Erica rolled her eyes. "What Ben means is that your dad is the creator of the virus."

"Oh." Jessica didn't say anything other than that.

"And on that note, Erica and I found nothing," Li Ming said.

"But now we have a group of five spies that can solve this mystery." Charlotte said.

Jessica wasn't a spy, but I let her have it.

And at that moment I was happy, despite the chaos in the country around us. I was happy I had found friends in the industry I was never supposed to join. And I could tell Erica was happy too, despite her blank face.

"Well I have a deal with Ben to fulfill, so see you later," Erica said at last, and stood up. I followed, and then left the three other girls behind us.

Once we were back in Li Ming's room, I turned to Erica and found her smiling slightly.

"You are extremely happy then," I said.

"I told myself when Joshua was 'killed' that friends were too liable to have," Erica said. "But I realised today that friends are necessary. And I know now that I miss the feeling of having friends. I have hope in this mission, Ben."

I gaped at her. "Are you telling me that I'm your friend?" I asked her.

She just laughed. "Yes, Smokescreen. I am."

"And the Icequeen becomes the Softqueen." I muttered.

Erica chuckled. And then we spent the next three hours playing video games together.