Um... I had this chapter written. And docs has deleted it. So! Starting from scratch! AndalsobeingverybadatupdatingI'msosorryIpromiseI'mworkingonit.

Fifteen

The team was at the Playground quite possibly faster than they ever had been before. Well, maybe not as fast as that one time it was mentioned that the vending machine had been restocked before they got there and Flinch had pulled everyone—

You get the point.

It was fast.

When they got there, they were understandably on the confused side of things. Why? The Playground was completely, utterly, and undoubtedly empty. Every single scientist, every single workbench, every single piece of tech and human being was just... Gone. Right down to...

"THE VENDING MACHINE!"

Flinch's anguished cry might have been funny if not for the fact that he sat himself in the place it used to be and started crying...This was not funny.

As I mentioned earlier, there are many reactions to being ridiculously overtired. Unfortunately for the NERDS team, Flinch was so stricken by this loss, which ordinarily would have been devastating for him, but when combined with two unfortunate pieces of trivia, made this missing machine a greater tragedy than the sinking of the Titantic. These two pieces of information?

1. Julio Escala hadn't slept at all. Not even for a single second.

2. Julio Escala had not eaten anything remotely sugary since a few caramels he'd had on the bus directly before they began the mission.

So now, Flinch was immovable and crying like someone had told him he was going to die within the hour. The rest of the team were looking around at the vast, empty space in a state of mild (extreme) shock. Ruby's eyebrows knitted themselves together.

"If no-one's here...who contacted us?"

The question, obviously, had to be the first order of business. Figure out what was going on. Get Flinch to stop crying. Maybe save the world, depending on whether or not the world needed saving. It probably did. It always did.

The N.E.R.D.S. team split up to investigate the room they were currently in, as well as the many leading off it. Macy found herself on Flinch cheering-up duty, largely due the fact that she still didn't really know where all the secret rooms were.

...apparently there were a lot more than she had been anticipating.

She also hadn't been anticipating Flinch to be this utterly heartbroken over the loss of the vending machine. He wasn't listening to her. At all. She was now snapping her fingers in his face.

She had forgotten just how bad she was at snapping her fingers again, okay, gonna start screaming now.

Macy did a great impersonation of a fire alarm from her spot next to Flinch where the vending machine used to be. The shouts of the others echoed out of the various rooms they were in.

"Hey guys, I think I found something!..that's a spider. That is definitely a spider."

"Don't touch it!"

"I wasn't going to!"

"Did you guys know we had a pool? 'Cause we have a pool."

"Oh man, we gotta test it out!"

"After we find everyone, Jackson!"

"I wasn't suggesting right now, Ruby!"

"Dude, you were totally thinking right now."

"I was not!"

"Hey guys, I found something interesting!"

"Is it a cool bug?"

There was a silence.

"Don't bring it out."

There was a weightier silence.

"WHY!?"

A random but admittedly cool bug was released from a hatch in the ceiling. Macy nudged Flinch in an effort to point it out to him. He continued sobbing. Macy stopped being a fire alarm.

"This is hurting my throat. So, if you're not going to stop, just don't move."

Macy proceeded to rest her head on Flinch's shoulder and go to sleep. Or...pretend to go to sleep and instead freak out. THIS WAS WHAT HAPPENED WHEN SHE TRIED TO INTERACT WITH HUMANS WITHOUT SLEEPING. WHY HAD SHE DONE THIS. HOW HAD SHE DONE THIS. WHY WAS SHE LIKE THIS. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

It took Flinch a few seconds to notice that Macy's head was on his shoulder. He then froze. He also stopped crying. The two of them sat in stiff silence for what felt like an eternity but was probably more like...three minutes. They stopped and immediately jumped apart when Matilda blasted her haphazard way back into the main room.

"I FOUND SOMETHING! IT'S NOT A KIND OF BUG!"

The rest of the N.E.R.D.S. seemed to materialise right out of the woodwork. Which is a strange expression to use in this instance because there was literally no wood in the Playground. But, you get the gist of it all, right?

Everyone followed Matilda, who honestly seemed to be getting a lot better at stabilising her sleep-deprived flying. She only hit the walls twice! Flinch was getting consistently more sluggish and leaning on whatever was nearest to him every few steps. When that something was nothing, he crashed onto the ground like a felled tree.

...progress was pretty slow.

When the kids did eventually reach the end of the (rather stupidly) long hallway, they found a door labelled 'Advanced Personal Only'. They went through it, obviously. Who in the facility was more advanced then them?

Agent Brand and Miss Holiday. Duncan was the fastest taking in the room, and voiced his opinion about what it was in record time.

"This is Agent Brand's office."

It had clearly also once been Miss Holiday's office, but judging by the fact that one of the two desks in the room was blocked off by a large screen, their boss was trying to forget that. Matilda, staring at a cork board covered in photos, red wool, and thumbtacks, added to the discussion.

"I knew he had to HAVE one, but I didn't really think I'd ever get to see it."

There were general murmurs of agreement. Each of the N.E.R.D.S. had found something to fiddle with, and as such, had begun to fiddle with it.

Ruby was sitting in Brand's chair and going through the paperwork covering his desk, Matilda was inspecting a few of the old movie posters displayed on the left wall (was that the old guy Mobi had been obsessed with last year, or did all the guys in old movies just look the same?), Jackson was going through a rather impressive stash of hair products he'd found in Brand's top drawer, Duncan was captivated by what looked like a prototype of the laser watches they were all wearing right now, Flinch had found a (quite possibly stale) chocolate bar and was trying to savour it, and Macy...er...Agent Megaphone had found an actual megaphone.

She turned it on, obviously, and then spoke into it. Because that's what you do when you find a megaphone. No, not the person. The object. All the agents sneezed violently, and Megaphone's (the person, not the—you know.) voice came through into their brains. Macy stared at the object. Everyone else did too.

"Guys? What do you wanna bet you don't need to be hooked up to the system to activate the comlink and come done here?"

"I'll put fifty bucks on it."

Miss Information strode out of the private bathroom, into the room.

"Surprised?"

Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier that I was sorry but I'm gonna do it again here anyway. I AM AO VERY SORRY!

I hope you liked it. This chapter was originally so different. Like, so different. But this happened instead. I quite like it, so maybe you will too.

~Madei