Chapter 21- After the Shadow Games (VI)
Once the team and Rose had snuck into the school and gone down the lift shaft, they told the doppelgangers how to look when Frank arrived at HQ; Keri and Aneisha sleeping, Tom playing Blade Quest and Dan practicing parkour against the pillars.
Dan, Aneisha, Dan, Keri and Rose shot back up the lift and snuck back out of the school and literally had to run to Tom's without getting caught at 12:00 in the morning. Tom had to use his set of keys to arrive through the back door of his house and when they arrived in the lounge room, Tom collapsed onto one of the sofas.
"You right Tom?"
"Yeah…just…dead…" He clutched his stomach in pain from all that running.
"Mate, you need to get into a gym." Dan suggested but at the word 'gym' Tom shook his head furiously.
"No…way…too…much…work…need…biscuits…" Aneisha raced to the kitchen and pulled out a packet of Custard Creams so Tom could restore his 'energy'. Tom grabbed about 3 biscuits and shoved them into his mouth without a second thought. Everyone laughed at how desperate he was for some food. He lay there for a while until he had enough energy to grab his laptop from upstairs.
"I'll be right back guys, need my laptop." He walked up the stairs, coming down a few minutes later. He plopped himself onto the same couch he almost died on and everyone gathered around him to see what he was doing.
"Alright guys, this is where we monitor the doppelgangers every move. The screen is split into four sections; Dan is the top left-hand corner, Aneisha's is the top right-hand corner, mine is below Dan's and Keri's is below Aneisha's. So Dan, your pretty much a blur right now, Aneisha and Keri are as still as statues, except for Keri's snoring, and all you can see on mine is me defeating everything in sight, well, on the computer anyway."
"Hey! Why did you program me to snore! I don't snore!" Keri complained and Aneisha giggled a little.
"Actually Keri, you sort of do. Remember you came over for a sleepover last week? And how I was exhausted the next morning? It's because your snoring kept me up all night." Keri frowned and everyone laughed.
"Alright, alright, I get it. So can I get a bit more sleep now? I'm exhausted!" She started to blink a lot and lay down on the sofa next to Tom's.
"I need some snooze time too. Reprogramming is hard work you know." Rose also lay down on another sofa.
"DITTO."
"Same."
"I need sleep too!"
So by now all of the teenagers were lying on an individual sofa, snoozing softly and soundly, except for Keri, who was snoring again.
7 hours later…
Dan woke up to see a white wall I front of him.
"I swear I had blue walls." He mumbled but when he rolled over and fell onto the floor, he realised where he was.
"Oh yeah, Tom's." He rubbed his eyes and saw and sat up to see Aneisha still sleeping on the couch next to him and Rose daydreaming on the couch next to hers. He looked behind him to see Tom playing some fantasy game and Keri still snoring. He laughed a little and shook his head.
"Doesn't snore huh?" he got and sat next to Tom. Tom glanced at him for a second them returned to his game, completely uninterested with Dan was going to say, which was what he expected anyway.
"Watcha doin'? Tom sighed and paused his game to talk to Dan.
"If I tell you, will you actually pay attention to what I'm saying and stop daydreaming about Zoe?" Dan blushed and looked down at his feet; he still missed her loads. When he said goodbye, he should have told her how he felt. When she hugged him, he should have lifted her head and kissed her. But no, he had to be all shy and just wave; now he'll never be able to admit his feelings for her.
"Yeah, mostly." He mumbled the last part.
"So yeah. I have to defeat this guy by using the right sword, magic and armour combination but there are loads of possibilities so I just hacked into the game server and retrieved the info. So now I have to… and of course you're not listening to me your daydreaming about Zoe so I'm just gonna return to my game." Tom pressed 'resume' his game and started to warm up his thumbs.
"I'm bored; can we monitor the doppelgangers now?" Tom sighed again and touched some buttons on the screen until I could see a black screen
"Doppelgangers activate." Tom simply said. You could tell they were opening their eyes because it turned black for a second and then you could see HQ from four different angles.
"Cool."
"I know right?" Dan punched Tom lightly on the arm.
"So…watcha doin'?" Keri came up behind the couch and scared the living daylights out of them.
"Keri…don't do that again! Ok?" Dan turned to see Keri shrug.
"Whatever. Are they the doppelgangers view? That's so cool!"
"Yeah, the doppelgangers are already in their spy clothes and when they go up the lift, they'll change into the St Hearts uniform."
"My boyfriend, the genius." Aneisha had come behind the sofa too and kissed Tom on the cheek, which Tom blushed at, of course.
"Hey! I worked on it too!" Rose sat up on the couch and rubbed her eyes. Everyone gathered around Tom's spypod, completely awake and looking at the four split screens.
"Sooooo… what do we do now?" Keri asked and Tom shrugged.
"Uh… sit here and wait for 8:30am I guess; that's when Frank usually arrives at base." Tom explained.
"And you would know because…" Rose smirked.
"Ok! Sometimes I go to HQ early and practice hacking into the really secure M.I.9 files, like Frank's." They all laughed; everyone knew Frank's file was way too secure. It was fingerprint, DNA and password protected but Tom had already got the password. He laughed every time he tried to open Frank's file.
"But it's really funny hacking into Frank's file because it's like Stella's going to read his password." He laughed at himself and everyone else looked confused. Tom sighed.
"It's 'IL0V3Y0UST3LLA'."
"Oh…" Everyone else chorused.
"Oh…" Tom mimicked them at the same time.
"You know his dinosaur computer in the Bunker?" Rose and Keri looked confused.
"The Bunker is where they used to work about 10 years ago. It's made of titanium." Dan still looked impressed.
"Yeah, there's like this really ancient computer down there like the ones they used in the early 2000's-"Rose and Keri laughed at this; Tom was always judging new and old tech.
"-It has all of Frank's old files on there and it has a photo of them dating ten years ago which is hilarious…anyway, I searched through his old files and found all these documents. Guess what they were based on?" Everyone look deep in thought.
"Was it…never mind, I forgot." Keri frowned and tried to think again.
"What were they based on Tom?" Aneisha doesn't like guessing; she's the mind reader of the group.
"They were all documents about Stella. Her face, hair, personality, some I really don't want to go into detail…" Keri looked confused but everyone else laughed.
"I don't get it…oh! Yuck!" She stuck out her tongue and shook her head in disgust and everyone laughed harder at her; she could be so blond sometimes.
"Yeah, there was this one document and it was all about her eyes, no joke." The girls now had tears streaming down their faces and Dan asked-
"What? Did you read them?" Tom blushed and looked down, feeling sheepish, but Dan laughed so hard, he nearly wet himself.
"What?! You know I like invading private lives!" He objected and blushed even more. When he read them though, he was always thinking about Aneisha; he loved her so much.
"Guys look! Someone's coming down the lift!" Keri pointed at the split screen.
But it wasn't who they expected it to be…
Guys before you ask, it's not Zoe! Hahahahahaha! :D Love you all!
Jasmine xoxo