10:34 A.M. Seattle, WA, U.S.A
It all started like an average day.
Spencer tried to pick up the heavy cooler filled with Peppy Colas, Fat Cakes, and different meats courtesy of Sam. Freddie sat atop the car's front, doing inventory on the many things they were bringing to the park. Besides the cooler Sam insisted on taking assorted sports equipment, and Carly on bringing several fashion magazines and a radio with David Archuleta CDs. He didn't want to bring anything other than food for their picnic. It was rare that a day would roll around in Seattle perfect for picnicking. As you know, Washington isn't the driest state. When Freddie saw the beautifully clear sky, his first instinct was to alert the group. They all decided a picnic would be a splendid idea, especially since it involved eating—Sam would be happy.
As he scribbled down the last title of Carly's limitless magazines, Freddie made out a black shadow overcoming him. He looked to his left to find Sam sitting beside him, her dirty-blonde curls dancing round her face. He couldn't deny Sam was a pretty girl despite her constant attacks on him. She was still his friend with or without her nasty nature…for the most part. She wasn't as comforting or nice a friend as Carly but that's just who she was; who was he to change her?
"Done categorizing your style mags?" she mocked, raising a devious eyebrow. Freddie emitted a sigh like he did daily. He no longer fought with her about her insults; instead he shrugged them off, only rolling his eyes or sighing.
"I refuse to dignify that with a response." he said, scooting off the car hood. Sam hopped off too, and followed the boy to the back end of the car where Spencer was still trying to pick up the cooler. You'd think he'd be stronger at his age but, no, he'd never been the Hulk. Freddie handed Sam the notepad, rubbed his calloused hands together, and grabbed the other end of the blue cooler. With his added strength they were able to hoist it up and lay it in the trunk. Beads of sweat had begun to show on Spencer's face but he rubbed them away as he let out a strangled breath.
"Thanks, Freddo," he said, "but, uh, I coulda done that on my own." The girls giggled while Freddie merely smirked at Spence's denial.
"Sure, sure." he replied, turning to enter the car. Carly and Sam followed suit, Carly nabbing shotgun afore the demon. Freddie knew Sam wanted the passenger seat to escape being near him for an entire ride. As stated earlier, they weren't best friends; more like acquaintances.
Knowing defeat, Sam climbed in next to Freddie but deliberately ignored him by gazing out the window. Freddie just smirked and looked out his own window at the passing buildings and people. Carly began rambling about the interesting things she discovered in her copy of Teen Vogue without realizing no one cared. Freddie kept his muddy brown eyes glued to the outside world. Several different forms of humans were seen: dog walkers, joggers, mothers pushing baby strollers, couples hand in hand. All your run of the mill parties.
However, as the car drove near the Seattle Space Needle, Freddie noticed the throng of passersby was different than usual. They weren't overbearing tourists with cameras and brochures; instead, they were all normal Seattle-goers, but they were all crowded around in disarray.
"Hey…hey, hey, stop!" Freddie stammered. Spencer impulsively stepped on the brake, and the car jerked to a rough stop. Freddie flung his door open and ran over to the pack of onlookers. He was so enraptured by the horrific sight that he could barely hear Sam, Spencer, and Carly following: all the citizens—young and old alike—were screaming and pushing past others to get away. Craning his neck to look, he saw men and women in black suits with cords wrapped around their ears (probably a cordless communication device). They were shouting for the horde to move away but in a calm, organized manner which they were most certainly not doing. A few of the black suits ran up to the mob and led them away to an area in the nearby park. Onlookers in said park (the one where they were going to picnic in) were trying to see what the H-E-Double-Toothpicks was happening over there. As the mass scuttled past Freddie and the rest, they shouted to them "Get down, you dumb kids! Get down!" They started to move down when a sudden blast came from the Space Needle. A yellowish-red cloud puffed up from the top while bits of metal and glass flew every which way. Carly screeched but it was covered by chokes as the smoke entered her open mouth. Sam did not scream but instead threw herself onto Freddie to cover herself from the flying debris. Freddie wrapped his arms round her and hid his face in her hair. They all stayed low to the ground for a long time (hours might've passed) before Freddie braved lifting his head.
The Space Needle that had stretched six hundred and five feet in the air was now a pile of rubbish with billowing smoke and small flames. Those in black suits were stamping out the tiny fires and talking on their Bluetooths. His heart sank at the sight of the charred rubble of what had been a sacred American monument. Now, in only a few seconds, it was gone. He could scarcely breathe at the depressing view. He turned his head to look behind him: the swarm was standing and sitting on the grass, staring dumbly at the ruins. Others were weeping, men too. The suits that had guided them away did talked amongst themselves in what appeared to be hushed tones.
"Guys, it's over," Freddie whispered to his clan, "get up." Spencer raised his head first, and his face fell much like Freddie's had. Carly was third to look up; her face was red and her eyes teary. Seeing the refuse didn't help and she started sobbing again. Sam was last to look up but her reaction was no different.
"Oh, God…" she murmured. Freddie nodded at her sentence sadly. They all rose to their feet, Carly shakier than the rest, and continued to look at the poor sight. Freddie and Spencer's arms were still around the girls but neither shrugged one off, not even Sam.
One of the black suits saw their raggedy bunch, and waved over another. The two spoke quietly as they stared at them; one shook his head whilst the other nodded his determinedly. Eventually the first stopped arguing and they both approached the group.
"Hello." the first said. Carly yelped and Spencer rubbed her back in reassurance, but she didn't look any less scared. Sam did the complete opposite of her best friend: she straightened her stance, broke away from the boy holding her, and put a hand on her hip. The second man smirked amusedly through his goatee but Freddie knew he wouldn't be smirking any longer if he angered Sam—she was a fighting machine, what with all her martial arts and boxing lessons at a young age.
"May we ask your names?" the second asked, holding out a beefy hand. Spencer stepped forward past the teens, putting on the expression of a responsible adult. He took the man's hand and shook it—compared to the black suit, Spencer's hand bore a resemblance to a five-year-old's.
"Spencer Shay." said Spencer, "This is my sister Carly, and her buddies Freddie Benson and Sam Puckett." Upon hearing Sam's name, the men glanced at each other as though they'd been waiting to hear it. Their looks alarmed Freddie; if two men in black suits with dark sunglasses and Bluetooths who had appeared right after an explosion wanted Sam, it couldn't be a good thing.
"I'm Lorenzo." the first, a heavily tanned man with a powerful muscular build, said, "This is my comrade, Peter." The second, Peter, was a fairer-skinned man but his physique was no less burly than Lorenzo's. Both of them had to have trained long and hard to obtain such well-built bodies. And, if their outfits were any clue, they had to have trained for a particular job.
"If you all will," Peter said, waving his hand behind him, "we'd like you to come with us." Sam stepped forward, looking at the man with a distrustful glower.
"Where are we going, Peter, if that's your real name?" she spat. Peter again smirked but didn't say anything down to her.
"We are going to go somewhere important," he told her, "and maybe it is." A chill crawled up Freddie's spine at the last words. Sam gave her own smirk at "Peter". Freddie could almost hear her thinking He's not half bad.
Sam started following the black suits until Freddie's hand grabbed hers. His expression was scared and astounded. "Sam," he whispered, "we can't just go with them! They could be assassins, or something worse—"
"Freddork, I've been in trouble with the government before." she said, too casually for his tastes. "So I know what's up. But you have to do whatever I say, got that, you pansy?" Albeit being referred to as a pansy insulted him, he knew Sam was right: she was wiser than the rest of them and if she trusted these guys, it was smart to just do as she did.
Although reluctant, they followed the two men past the mound of metal. A few sleek black cars were parked in the street. Lorenzo and Peter (or whoever they really were) went to one of them and pulled the doors open. Sam and Carly entered first and then Spencer and Freddie. Sam got stuck sitting next to Freddie again but this time she showed no disgust.
Lorenzo put his foot on the gas, and the car drove away from the sad rubble mound. The way the men drove off without looking back seemed so blasé and it stunned Freddie a little; they seemed unconcerned that someone had just exploded the Space Needle, one of America's most revered monuments. He was more stunned, though, by that it had exploded and now black suits were taking them somewhere they didn't know. The urge to jump out of the car right then came over Freddie but he needed to remain calm for the rest of them. Besides, these men were most likely government officials so they'd never hurt innocent Americans, especially three so young.
After what felt like a weeklong ride, the black vehicle parked in front of a tall building. It looked like any work building with glossy windows and flowerbeds of many colors and an exquisite fountain in front. Lorenzo and Peter got out of their seats and began approaching the front doors, expecting the group to follow. Freddie went to open the door when a hand flew to his shoulder to stop him. He almost screamed from the stress he was already under but it was only Sam. She leaned her head close to his and put her mouth near his ear.
"Stay cool, Freddifer." she whispered, not even letting the fact that two strange men had taken them to a workplace stop her from awarding him a nickname, "If this chiz gets messy, stand back while I handle it." Freddie purely nodded, knowing Sam knew better than him about this kind of junk. She moved her head away and he went to open the door again. The four stepped out and ran up to the men, who had stopped walking.
"Be faster, kids." Peter warned, "You never know who might pop up." He then turned along with Lorenzo and they went to enter the building.
"It's like they expect Chuckie to come running." Freddie joked in an attempt to lighten the mood. No one laughed, not even him. Chuckie sounded like a Care Bear compared to who they might face in that building.
Inside there were no dead bodies strewn across the ground or attack dogs nipping at their heels—it still looked like a normal workplace with a receptionist at the desk and offices around her with an elevator set to go up twenty floors. The men walked up to the woman typing at her computer. She looked up from the screen and smiled a bright white smile.
"Good afternoon, Lorenzo. Peter." she greeted, nodding to each man at his name, "What can I do for you?"
"Don't worry, they're with us." Lorenzo whispered to her. Her green eyes looked around his bulky build at them. Carly waved pitifully.
"I see." she said. Then, very quickly, her hands went into a desk drawer and whipped out an item that resembled a credit card. Peter took it, nodded as thanks, and they walked away towards the elevator. He waved for them to follow, which they did hastily, Sam in the lead.
Freddie's feet went for the elevator but neither man's did; instead they moved down a narrow hallway with more offices. Freddie saw Sam's eyes dart back and forth between each of the doors, probably calculating possible escape routes. Boy, was he glad she was on his side.
The men stopped at one door with a blank gold plaque at the top. Freddie found this peculiar for every other door had the same plaque but with a name carved in. It must be a newly built office, Freddie thought but in the back of his mind he didn't believe that.
Peter opened the wooden door slowly; they expected to find a regular office's furniture, but the group was surprised to see it was completely empty. There was no desk, computer, lamp, or anything. Not even a window. Freddie and Carly suddenly obtained claustrophobia at being in this closeted room but Sam looked unaware of the irregularity of the setting.
Lorenzo squatted down and brought the card down to the floor. Freddie at first thought he was crazy until he saw the card slide right through the linoleum. His jaw dropped along with his three other pals as the floor began flashing a red color. After seven flashes of red (he knew because Sam was whispering the number under her breath), the floor became a solid green. Lorenzo hopped back up just as the green square moved away to reveal a hole. They bent over to see it was a bottomless pit of black underneath. Freddie didn't want to hop down there anytime soon.
Lorenzo jumped down into the square hole first. Freddie strained to hear a crash but it never came. This scared him even more than if he had heard one. Peter gestured for them to go before him—none of them did. All stayed rooted to the spot until Sam groaned and stepped forward.
"Sam, no!" Carly cried but the blonde went down anyway. The brunette bit down on her lower lip, trying to keep from crying again. Freddie again tried to hear a crash of body hitting ground but again it never came.
Carly ran into the hole after a few seconds of painful silence. She, unlike Sam and Lorenzo, screamed all the way down, her voice getting softer 'til it dispersed. Freddie looked to Spencer, fear in his eyes. Alas, he did not try to escape the fate of going down the teeny hole; instead he embraced it, by being the next to go.
Dark was the only suitable word to describe what it was like to go down. The wind rushed past him upward as he fell, billowing his shirt up to reveal his stomach. His breathing quickened as the adrenaline wore off from jumping in. Now he repeated within his head how stupid he was and that he would surely tumble to his death. This feeling of impending doom ripped a scream from his throat, which caused the air to be let out of him when he hit solid ground.
"Ah, my back…" he mumbled, shuddering as his body laid on icy-cold floor. Was this death? The feeling of cold under your body before you were sent either up or down? He was certain he was dead when the glowing face of an angel appeared over his. Her blonde ringlets hung over her face and a dazzling halo shaped the top of her head. She was beautiful…but soon he found she was no angel.
"Get up, ya' crybaby." Sam said, grabbing his hand and yanking him upwards into a sitting position. Freddie shook his head, blinking away the dizziness that had overcome him. How could I think Sam was an angel? he thought, rising to his feet while holding a palm to his lower back, She's the total opposite—a devil. He surveyed his surroundings after adjusting to the low lighting: as far as the eye could see were white hallways. It was hard to make them out because the only source of light came from above. Freddie felt like he swallowed a foot with the imminent danger that was no doubt coming for them. A girlish shriek from above shook him out of his frightened trance long enough to leap out of the way before Spencer landed not-so-gracefully on the ground.
"Mother of mercy, that smarts!" the man yelled, along with moans of pain as he rolled around on the floor. Freddie saw Sam roll her eyes before she did the same to Spencer what she did to him. Soon he was standing, clutching his back like Freddie had (only he complained much more than the boy). Peter came down soon after, landing perfectly on his feet. Spencer stared at him in astonishment but looked away when Peter glared at him.
"Follow us, quickly now." Lorenzo said, walking in a fast style down one hall. The gang ran to catch up with him while Peter went to the rear. Carly's hands went in her brother's and Freddie's. Freddie felt compelled to take Sam's hand too but he wasn't up to dying…at least not by her if these black suits weren't to be trusted.
At the end of the corridor was a steel door with an array of buttons. Lorenzo entered some sort of code in one and scanned his eyeball in another. After the green light scanning his iris stopped, a robotic female voice said "Please enter, Agent 689."
"I see where 'Lorenzo' would be catchier." Sam joked, and Freddie laughed, a little too loud and shaky. The door swung ajar to reveal a dark room with a few white lights, but not enough to expose what (or who) was inside. Sam looked back at her posse, her eyes lasting on Freddie. Before they entered, Sam took his hand.
"Ladies first." Lorenzo said, waving to the room. Sam pulled Freddie and the others into the dimly lit room where their future resided.