Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Columbia Pictures and to the writers and producers and whoever else I may have forgotten to mention. The only things I claim to own are my own characters and the plot of this story.


"Hey Connor!" He heard Cindy exclaim from the back of the bus.

He glanced back to where the rest of the Zenith team sat in their usual seats. Cindy was chipper as always, practically bouncing off the seat and into the walkway. Everyone else, however, looked about as horrible as Connor did. Summer had a light scratch above her left eyebrow. Dylan had a black eye and kept rubbing his right arm as though it hurt. Tucker looked about the best of the group, but even he was slumped over in his seat, fast asleep. As he approached, Summer gave him a small smile. It had been a tough fight for all of them.

Connor sat, a flash of pain running up his left arm causing him to wince. Cindy plopped down on the seat next to him. "Connor, guess what?" she bounced up and down again.

He sighed internally. He really wasn't in the mood for one of her little guessing games. After the last time he had been dragged into playing 'I Spy' with her, he definitely didn't want to spend the rest of the bus ride trying to guess the she was looking at a red thread that had come loose on his shirt. But he answered her anyway. "What Cindy?"

Her voice lowered a bit so only people within a few feet could hear what she was saying. "Marsha said the police found a sample of one of the thieves' blood! They gave it to Dr. Grant to see who it is. Isn't that cool!"

Connor thought back to the day before, and suddenly remembered seeing the one called Charm get hit with something. It must have cut her badly enough to leave blood behind. The thought brought a brief smile to his face. "Yeah, that's pretty cool."

Cindy's smile returned as she whipped around and jumped back to her own seat. Her blonde curls settled into place as she slumped against the seat back, eyes already closing. Connor realized that her excitement must have been overcoming any tiredness she was feeling. Now that she had told him the news, she was wiped out. He sighed as he too settled back against the seat to look out the window. His eyelids were heavy, but he knew that if he fell asleep now, he stood no chance to get through the school day.

The bus screeched to a sudden stop in front of the next house. Connor hadn't realized he was dozing with his head resting on the window, but he did when he slid forward and knocked his forehead on the windowsill. He jumped in surprise, causing another shock of pain to run up his left side. It hurt, but at least it helped to wake him up.

He heard the bus driver greet the newcomers. Connor tilted his head to see over the top of the seat, to find only Allie boarding the bus. Her cousin was nowhere in sight. His friend quickly slipped down the aisle and into the seat in front of Cindy. Once seated, she turned around and gave him a smile. "Morning, Connor," she said before she got a good look at him. When she did, she seemed a bit taken aback. "Uh, no offense, but you kinda look terrible."

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. "Thanks," he said, letting his head rest against the back of the seat in front of him as he tried to come up with an excuse. "My older brother and I were playing football last night and it got a little rough."

She didn't seem to know he was lying. But she quirked her eyebrow at him. "I wouldn't take you for a person who likes to play football," she said after a moment. Then she shrugged, obviously satisfied with his rushed answer.

She turned away from him. As she turned, she placed her hand on the seat, and Connor took notice of the clean white bandage around her left hand. She winced slightly as if she'd hit it the wrong way. Normally, it wasn't something he would have taken particular note of. But immediately, his mind flashed back to the memory of the fight the day before. He'd seen the leader, Charm, get hit on the hand by a broken mug when Summer entered. And Cindy had just said that the police had gotten a blood sample.

He sat up and leaned out into the aisle. "What did you do to your hand?"

Allie turned back to him, briefly confused. "Oh, this? I, uh, I just cut myself yesterday when I was up at the barn waiting for cattle showing practice to start. It was pretty bad and in a weird spot, so I had to bandage it like this."

She glanced at the bandage and then back at him before continuing. "It hurts, but it'll be okay. Aunt Meg says it's deep and it may take a few weeks to heal, but it's not anything that requires stitches."

He nodded, but didn't reply. The timing of her injury and the fight yesterday, that couldn't be coincidence. But Allie was his friend. And, she'd been in school at the same time the attack happened. There was no way she could be one of the thieves. Someone cleared their throat, and Connor instinctively tensed.

"Are you okay?" Allie asked as her eyebrows raised again. "Did you hurt yourself playing football last night?"

"I'm fine, really," he told her as the bus pulled up in front of the school. "Just sore."


"Alright, everyone," Mrs. Kilby said to the class as she flicked on the classroom lights. "Your homework for tomorrow is to write a short, one paragraph paper over one thing you learned from that episode. Now, tie to assign topics for projects!"

Connor groaned inwardly. Allie had told him about the massive class project they had to do that semester. The worst part was that the topic wouldn't be of his choosing, the teacher was going to assign them a topic. Even though he could create sonic booms, Physics had never been his strongest subject in school. At least they could choose their partner for the project, and Allie seemed to be slightly better than he was at understanding the material.

Mrs. Kilby pulled a piece of paper from within a folder on her desk. "Let's see here. Julia and Emily, your assigned topic-"

Connor waited to hear his name called. It seemed like there were a million other names on the list before his and Allie's were finally called.

"Allie, Connor, your topic is rockets and how their design aids in their propulsion," Mrs. Kilby announced before continuing on to the last few groups.

Connor released a breath he didn't know he was holding, only to hear muffled laughter from the seat beside him. He glanced over to where Allie sat to find her smiling at him. "Does this project really scare you that bad?" she asked.

He stuck his tongue out at her and crossed his arms in feigned anger, which only made her giggle more. "Come on, Connor," she said after a moment. "A physics project isn't rocket science."

She paused, thinking through her last sentence, then giggled again. "Well, I mean, it is rocket science in this case, but it's not like we have to do the complicated math or anything. I was thinking maybe we could make a model?" There was a spark in her eyes that told Connor she was pretty excited about this project.

Mrs. Kilby was giving the rest of the class period to begin discussing their project, so the two of them pushed their desk together. Allie pulled out her Physics notebook and started writing out notes for the project. "We'll need to look at propulsion systems and I'm sure we could find some pretty good research from Nasa! Do we want to try and do an actual rocket launch to explain the theories behind it?"

Connor shook his head. "Nah, I think just one model should do it, but maybe we could find some videos for the slide show?"

"Great idea!" Allie said, frantically erasing the first idea. She brought a hand up to brush away the eraser shavings, again giving Connor a good view of the bandage. He stared at it for a minute, before Allie waved her other hand in front of his face.

He glanced up to find her eyebrow cocked again. "Do you want me to unwrap it so that you can see it? Do injuries fascinate you or something?"

"No, it's just-I was just wondering how you cut yourself up in the barn."

"There's lots of ways to hurt yourself up there. But this time I was trimming Daisy May's hair and got a phone call. I forgot I had my phone sound on, and-it's kinda funny- but Dahlia changed my ringtone as a joke and it scared me. The trimmers slipped and I tried to catch them. Caught 'em, just in the wrong spot," she grimaced and flexed her fingers. "Can we finish talking about this project?"

The story was somewhat satisfactory to Connor, although there was still a nagging suspicion in the back on his mind. He put it as far back in his mind as he could and gave his friend a small smile. "Sorry, just thinking of how bad it must have felt. She do we want to get on the computer to start some research?"


The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The clock ticked on, his locker stuck a couple of times during class change, and the bell rang at the end of the day. Sometime after lunch, the pain in Connor's arm had begun to steadily grow. He was ready to go home, take some ibuprofen, and sleep until the next morning.

By the way Dylan and Summer were looking as they sat down in their usual seat, they were feeling the same way. The mark around Dylan's eye had actually grown darker throughout the day, and as much as Connor wanted to say something witty about him looking like half a racoon, he just could not muster the energy. At least in Ag Science that day, they hadn't trekked up to the barn. Thankfully, Mr. Hayes had them doing bookwork over ruminant digestive systems. Connor actually wasn't sure if he would have made it up to the barn; he'd barely been able to drag himself to the bus.

A couple of minutes later, Allie too dropped into her usual seat in front of Connor. Her eyes peeked over the top of the seat briefly before disappearing, only to reappear around the side. "Are you okay?" she asked after watching him for a moment. "You've practically been dragging yourself around since lunch. Are you sure you didn't dislocate your arm last night playing football?"

"Seriously, I'm fine," he said, relaxing back into his seat while trying to avoid touching his arm. Her concern was touching, but he was also beginning to get tired of people asking him if he was okay. "It's just sore is all. The ibuprofen I took this morning wore off around lunch."

His explanation seemed to satisfy her. The bus began to roll forward out of the school parking lot, and it was only then that Connor realized that there was a strange silence from the back of the bus. He leaned out into the aisle to check the very last seat on the bus, only to find its usual occupant missing. The movement must have caught Allie's attention, because a moment later, she too was looking at the last seat. "Whatcha lookin' at?"

"I just noticed Dahlia isn't on the bus. Did she stay late at school or something?"

"No. She got sick last night and stayed home today. Aunt Meg said it was just a stomach virus or something, not bad enough to go to the doctor. But Lia obviously didn't feel like coming to school today. Did you not notice she didn't get on this morning?"

Connor shook his head, but thinking back, he realized he did. He just had been too tired to register it that morning. Speaking of being tired, he cast a glance back at Dylan and Summer to find both of them asleep as the bus pulled into the elementary school parking lot to pick up the younger kids.

Other than Cindy's usual perkiness and eagerness to talk about her day, the bus ride home was uneventful. Most of the rest of the team dozed during the hour and a half long ride, occasionally jumping awake when Mr. Flannigan hit the brakes too hard to let someone off. Even Connor found his eyes beginning to grow heavier with each stop.

It was only when Allie stood up at one stop that Connor realized the next hard brake would be at Jack's house. The thought woke him up a bit as he waved goodbye to his friend. As the bus pulled away, he noticed a curtain in one of the front windows fall back into place. He figured it was Dahlia waving to her friends she hadn't seen that day. A few minutes later, the yellow bus was pulling up in front of the old garage that was Jack's house. It was more of a bachelor pad than an actual house, but it served its purpose well, Connor thought as he stepped down onto the cracked sidewalk. And there was a bed inside with his name on it.

Connor ignored the bus as it pulled away, instead letting his mind wander into an almost autopilot state. The door was open; Jack never locked it unless he was going to be out of town for a while. Inside the door, Connor let his backpack drop to the floor. The next stop was the bathroom to take a few over the counter pain pills and then the kitchen for a small snack. By the time he actually opened the door to his room, Connor was halfway asleep. He practically collapsed onto his bed and knew no more.


"Have you found any good designs for a model? We need something easy, but also cool-looking."

The week after the fight, there was a brief snap of warm weather. So warm, in fact, that Connor and Allie had decided to work on their Physics project outside that afternoon. They were sitting under one of the few trees in the small grassy area Jack called the backyard. Connor had brought his laptop out so that they could begin to work on their project slideshow. They'd agreed to split up the responsibilities, with Connor putting together the majority of the slides while Allie worked on designing a model rocket.

"Mmn, not yet," Allie responded, plucking a blade of grass from a bunch at the base of the tree trunk. "I've been looking, but most of them are in kits that cost like one hundred dollars or more. We could go with a cheap inflatable one for ten bucks, but that would be for what designs you wouldn't want to use. It might just be easier to build our own."

Connor nodded in understanding. When they'd first started the project and discussed a model, he'd halfway wanted to ask Dr. Grant if they could borrow one of the smaller rockets the scientist collected and kept hidden in his private lab. But although he figured the good doctor would be willing, it would also raise questions about where he got it, and that was not something he wanted to deal with.

The two of them settled into a comfortable silence for a moment while Connor typed on his computer and Allie settled back into the grass to look up at the clouds. It was a moment before Connor realized the flash of white in the corner of his vision was the fresh bandage on his friend's hand. He paused typing and watched as Allie continued to absentmindedly fiddle with the piece of grass she'd picked a few minutes before.

"Hey, is Dahlia feeling any better?" he asked, trying to push the thought of the thief's injury to the back of his mind again.

"Yeah," his friend replied without glancing at him. "Aunt Meg says she should be back Monday. Oh, remind me when Uncle Aaron gets here and I'll try to remember to ask him about helping us build a model."

She finally sat up and reached over to grab the notebook that Connor had been copying notes from. He glanced at the clock at the bottom of the computer screen and realized it was almost six o'clock. Allie's uncle would be arriving soon to pick her up. She'd gotten off the bus with him that afternoon after school, and they'd spent most of the two hours reading through their notes and research to make sure they were on the right track. Connor had created the slides for the presentation while Allie had used her phone to look up rocket kits. Now the sun was beginning to dip low behind the mountains to the west.

Allie turned her head toward the road as the sound of a diesel engine revved down the street. "Oh, that's my uncle."

The two of them stood and gathered their things from where they'd scattered them in the grass. Then they made their way to the front of the house where a crew cab truck was parked by the curb, idling. Jack was leaning by the passenger door, talking to the driver. They laughed about something, and then Jack noticed the two teens as they approached.

Allie smiled at her uncle as Jack opened the door for her to climb inside. "Thanks for inviting me over, Connor," she said after she'd settled her things in the backseat. "Next time we'll try and meet at my house, if Lia isn't sick again. I'll see you Monday!"

Her uncle chuckled in the driver's seat as he put the truck in gear and it pulled away from the curb. Connor waited until the vehicle had turned the corner out of sight, then turned back toward the house. Jack was waiting for him by the front door, smirking like a complete idiot. "Connor's got a girlfriend," he said in a singsong voice.

Connor punched him in the arm and went inside. But now that Jack had said it, maybe there was a bit more than just friendship there. It was completely possible that he liked Allie a little bit. But that thought brought the concern about the thieves from DataTech back to the front of his mind. He couldn't deny that it was odd the Allie had hurt the same hand that the thief Charm had on the same day. The chances that they were one in the same were slim, but he still couldn't get the idea out of his mind. He would just have to wait and see if the thieves struck again to find out exactly who Charm was.


Author's Note: Hello, dear readers! I'm sure y'all thought I'd forgotten about you. I do apologize for the delay between this chapter's release and the last update. A lot has gone on since I last updated, and this chapter has been sitting mostly written on my hard drive for the better part of the year and a half I've been idle. I am hoping, however, to get Chapter 6 out much faster than Chapter 5, so keep an eye out.

Also, keep in mind that I love reviews! They not only give me feedback about what y'all think of the story, but it also gives me encouragement to keep writing. And thanks to all my readers who keep coming back to this story even when it's not been updated in forever! I'm not super happy with this chapter, and it may end up rewritten at some point because, to me, it feels very disjointed and jumps around a lot. But for now I am going to move on and get started on Chapter 6.

As always, feel free to message me if you have any thoughts/ideas/concerns/etc. I love reading comments and they really give me encouragement to continue writing. Also, thanks again to everyone who has reviewed and followed! Every email that I get saying the story has a new follower or review or favorite motivates me to finish another chapter! ~NightRider