The days turned to weeks, which turned into months before almost a year had passed since we had moved up here. The trials moved on and the people were found guilty. Lucy was found, though she didn't want anything to do with Felicia while she still had powers. New Rose Hills seemed to grow every day as more and more people came in from not only the United States but from multiple countries, so much so that David had to start building more apartment complexes to help keep in with the demand. We had given him enough technology ideas that he didn't have any problem giving us money.
The world seemed fine with us when we slowly started helping the world not only with our technology. We helped regrow forests and many other things that had been cut back by greedy people. As well as growing crops in failing areas, and healing people affected by illnesses. One thing we had agreed upon was not interfering in countries that had the resources to help their people, we would help the one's who still had a long life ahead but medicine couldn't help anymore. We were doing the same things that we had done before, but we had actual backup this time around.
It was approching August about a year after we moved, and I was standing with David, and some high up people from multiple different countries. We were going over our plan to take Thurmond once again. It changed every so often, and they needed to be in the know. Thurmond was the second to last camp we were going to take, the last would be a small camp in Ohio, named Caledonia. Both David and I were getting pressue from just about everyone to finish Thurmond first, so we were taking the camp first.
I was about to point out an important detail when Seth Harper barged into the room. He was one of David's aids, and looked extremely stressed. I paused and looked at him as he whispered something into David's ear. As he talked David's face completly paled. He looked at me then at Seth again.
"What happened?" I asked, my stomach dropping. Seth usually didn't barge into meetings, so clearly something happened.
"A few of the prisioners in Caledonia tried to escape and the guards started shooting at the kids. The few people we had were able to defeat them, but about a hundred and fifty kids were able to escape annd are running around the Ohio countryside." My stomach dropped and my heart stuttered. Mirable and the kids of the Hare team had been in Caledonia to keep an eye on the camp while we finished with Thurmond.
"Come here," Justin said, grabbing a chair so I could sit down and calm down. I sat down and took a deep breath.
"Mirable, Sara and Bianca are completly fine," Seth said, and my mind was somewhat calmed, but not by much. "They and the survivors from the camp are being brought in right now. We have people searching for the other survivors. The survivors will be in New Rose Hills by this time tomorrow."
"Are they hurt?"
"No, just scared. I talked to them myself."
"Thank you," I said, and felt my breath. "Okay. I want as many people as we can spare to go down and find the one's who managed to get out." Justin nodded, and bent over his phone to call someone. "I want to be aware of every kid we found, and I want to know when Mirable and the others have arrived. I also want someone to start the funeral arrangements."
"We have no bodies yet. Mirable found out from one of her roommates about what was going on a few minutes before it started. She wasn't able to stop it from happening, but she managed to call the evac teams ahead of time so they were arriving when the shooting started. They were able to stop the shooting realitively early. They healed the one's they could and sent everyone they couldn't up here. A lot of the kids are about to go into surgery."
"Thank you," I said once again and tried standing up. But David gave me a clearly worried look. "I'm fine, beside's wouldn't you want to keep an eye on me."
"Fine," he said, and let me stand up all the way. I walked back to the large table that was full of maps and lists of names.
"I also got news from Cate Connor. The children's league is conducting tests in the camps. They're trying to route out upper scalled kids. They figured out how to use the color cordinated white noise."
Cate was one of our spy's in the children's league. She was a red outlier and one of the oldest known psi ever actually. We had managed to track how far Agent Ambrosia went and when it was first created. It was placed first in Alaska and Hawaii, then slowly spread into the lower fourty eight. Cate's mother had been in Alaska when it first showed up, and was one of the reason's she was on the outside of the scale.
"When is she doing the test?"
"Two weeks from now," Seth said.
"Alright, we'll raid the camp right after that," I said. Everyone seemed to understand that the meeting was over and they slowly started walking out of the room.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Justin asked.
"I'm fine," I said, and he gave me a doubtful look. "I will be fine. I'm just going to go lay down." He gave me a doubtful look, but let me leave anyway to go back to my room on base. I didn't have to wait for very long before Mirable was able to get a phone and call me. As I clicked the call button, and saw her face, I felt elated. Her face was covered in small scars, and a little bit of blood. Bianca and Sara were in the background.
"Mirable," I said happily. She smiled somewhat happily. "I am so happy to see your face."
"I am too," she said and looked over her shoudler.
"How bad is it?"
"Forty kids had severe enough injuries that required surgery, but most of them were head or stomach shots and we wanted to make sure everyone was fine before we sent them on their way. We were able to shove down a lot of the kids before they were hit, couple of them were trampled on, but were thankful nonetheless. We were able to get the kids in our hallwas clear of the building before the shooting started."
"Thank god. How about you?"
"Scared, but calming down." Something crashed behind her, and she swung around. "I have to go." Her phone shut off and I was left in silence. I leaned my head against the wall, and hoped this nightmare would subside once we took Thurmond.
Two weeks after the Caledonian incident, most of the kids from the camp had been found and taken to Canada. Thirty of the kids who had been hurt had to be put into a medically induced coma to keep them from getting even more hurt. The one's who had been hit in the head were the most concerning out of everyone.
Gage and I were going down to West Virgina with the first group of people down to Thurmond to scout out the place. Cate and her partner had already shown up and were already testing everyone. We knew who was color and so did Cate, but she couldn't exactly tell how she knew that.
We were driving along a couple miles from the camp when the car suddenly swerved and crashed forcing us to colide with one of the nearby trees. I snapped forward, and the only reason I didn't hit my head against the back of the seat in front of me was because of my seat belt.
"Is everyone okay?" I asked, looking around. Groans came from everyone. No one seemed hurt, but I didn't believe it until I used my powers to check everyone around me. No one was hurt.
"What did we hit?" Gage asked, and I used my powers to feel around. There weren't any obvious bobby traps, but I couldn't feel the tire. They were made of rubber, so that made sense.
"I don't know," I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and opening my door. I scanned the area around me for anyone, but didn't find anything. "Come on." As soon as I stepped out of the door I heard the wizz of a bullet. It missed me and hit the van. I ducked down and looked up at the bullet, caluclating in my head where it could have come from. As soon as that information was in my head, I snapped back and used my telikinis to snap back at the bounty hunter. I could tell that she went down, but because of the distance I couldn't tell much else about her, but I could tell that there was a truck full of PSF's heading toward us.
"Everyone out," I ordered and everyone scrambeled, making sure to grab their emergency kits as they did. Gage and I would be traveling light and we would be traveling right towards Thurmond in a vain attempt to have them catch us so that we could take Thurmond from the inside. Everyone jumped out, and Mike poured the spare gasoline into the back before jumping out and making a big show lit the van on fire.
Gage and I waited long enough for the truck to notice we were teenagers, before we broke into a run towards the camp. We ran through the forest and stopped two miles away from where we had broken down. When my legs finally gave up I huddled over and started gasping for air. "I need to keep up with my cardio," I said, and I could hear Gage gasping as well.
"Same. Do you think everyone else managed to get to the secure locations?"
"I sure hope so, but they're not going to hurt them, they're too important." We had made plenty of safe houses around here just for this situation. I paused for a second to listen to my surroundings. Something felt off, we were in the middle of the woods, but I could feel a strong electrical force coming from somewhere maybe three hundred yards from me.
"Do you feel that?" Gage asked, looking towards the energy.
"The strong electrical current?"
"Yeah. Come on," Gage said, stepping forward.
"Gage," I muttered following behind him.
"Come on," he said, not even turning to look back at me. We walked the short distance to the current and we stumbled upon a gate. On the other side were a bunch of people with guns leading kids to their cabins. Each one was dressed in a green or blue uniform. It was about a mile long. We found what we had been looking for, Thurmond.
"We found it," Gage muttered under his breath.
"Yeah," I said and I heard a gun cock from somewhere behind me. 'Found the PSF's,' I thought to Gage. We turned to face them. Six people in all black uniforms were waiting for us. All six of them had large guns towards us. We put our hands up, and two of the men walked forward, both pulling out handcuffs from their waistbands. The man who grabbed my hands to put them in my handcuffs sniffed my hair. Gross. One of the other men grabbed his walkie talkie and brought it to his mouth. "We found the two kids from the crash site, securing them now."
The two men dragged us away from the fence and towards the gate. There was a small gate next to the larger one that was meant to let in trucks. As they dragged us up the street I saw the last of the kids being shoved into their cabins. The PSF's practically dragged us up the street letting our feet drag.
Eventually the men stopped in front of a two story building that had a small sign on it, which read Medical Center. One of the men opened the door and we were pulled into it. A female doctor was waiting for us inside the door, holding a small device in her hand. I immediately recognized it as a white noise machine, something that the camp was so infamously known for. If she started with one of the orange frequencies, we could be in a lot of trouble.
"I just have to check your color dears," the woman said. I looked at Gage sideways before taking control of the woman's mind. Luckily for us, there was a way to lower the noise coming out of the machine so I had her lower it before hitting the release button. Even with it lowered, it was still so powerful that it brought us to our knees.
Our reaction must have convinced them because she pulled her finger away from the button, and she nodded at the two men. The two men behind us walked around to our fronts, and pulled the handcuffs off our hands. They didn't say anything as a young woman approached us with a stack of green clothing. Oh come on, I thought as I realized they wouldn't give us a room to change. I watched as the woman handed the clothes to one of the men, and I convinced him to put us in the bathroom together. As the man closed the door behind us, he gave me a pointed look.
"I guess it worked" he whispered as he started pulling his old clothes off. I bent down and pulled my pager out of my boot. I held it up and opened it and sent Justin the message that we were in Thurmond. We quickly finished dressing and walked out of the bathroom making sure all of our personal effects were hidden. Most of the men had left, presumably going back to their duties. Only two PSF's remained waiting to take us to our new cabins. Gage and I shared a look before they grabbed our arms and pulled us out of the infirmary. We were immediately pulled away from each other. I walked with the man to cabin twenty seven and waited with him as he opened the door.
As soon as it was open the man pushed me inside and followed behind me into the cabin. The girls in the cabin sat up in surprise, they were obviously not used to getting to people this late at night. The man touched my shoulder and pointed at the empty bed in the corner of the cabin. "You're there for now, we'll find a place to put you soon."
I wanted badly to hurt him, but knew he probably would respond badly if I did anything. I walked to the bed and sat down on it. He gave me an evil smile, and I didn't react, I kept my face completely neutral. He looked at me pissed before leaving when he realized he couldn't piss me off. The man turned and walked out of the cabin leaving us in silence. The rest of the girls looked at me curiously.
"Who are you?" one of the girls asked.
"Ava. I'm guessing this is Thurmond?" The girls gave me a pointed look. "Quessing I'm right." I fell down onto my back. I looked at the security camera and realozed it wasn't turned on. It was a relief, but they were probably focused too much on the blues.
"Where are you from?" the girl above me asked.
"San Francisco," I said, lying through my teeth. "How long have you been here?"
"Six years," one girl muttered. I felt a pang of quilt deep in my gut. During my eqapades of helping everyone else I hadn't spent a lot of time around Thurmond. I tried to not think about it much, but it was still in the back of my mind. I sat back up, and looked around.
"So why is this bed available?" I knew exactly why it was but I wanted to see what they thought about it.
"She died," the girl above me said, jumping off her bed and sitting down next to me. I looked at her and she seemed to be trying to figure something out but she didn't say anything else as she settled next to me.
"Ava. I'm Ashley, I'm kind of the boss around here. This one here is Samantha, though she likes being called Sam," she gave the girl next to me. Sam gave her a pointed look, and Ashley just gave her another pointed one. Sam stood up back up and jumped back into her bed. "Go to bed, we have to get up and work in the kitchen tomorrow."
"Alright," I said and leaned back against my bed. The sheets were threadbare and turning yellow. The mattress was pretty bad and as everyone around started getting ready for bed I stared at the practiced ease around the cabin.
"Night," Ashley called and everyone responded the same way. The bed was so uncomfterable that I almost had to knock myself out with my powers, but I didn't and waited for everyone to fall asleep before pulling my pager out of my bra. The small screen barley lightened the room, and I quickly opened the message Justin had sent me. It read; we're coming for you. I smiled to myself and slid the pager back into my bra and finally fell asleep.
It didn't take me a day to know that I hated Thurmond. The prisoners were only allowed to speak right before they went to bed, and the adults would always try to pick a fight with the kids. Cabin twenty seven would work in the garden or the Factory before working the first meal then we would be brought back to the cabin. It was extremely mindnumingly boring, but I hated it because you could practically smell the fear in the air. It didn't help that I could feel the occassional pulse from the white noise machines that we would use to track down kids in a area.
Gage's cabin and cabin twenty seven were across the street from one another, so it was easy for me to send messages to him when we were close enough to one another. It took me coming to Thurmond to relaize how much of a difference blues are treated from greens. At Tundra there was always someone watching, but here there was barely any. Which helped me significantly when I started sniffing around the camp, trying to figure who were the good adults, and which kids would want to live with which adult when we eventually moved to Canada.
I was sitting in cabin twenty seven on the seventh morning of my stay. The camp was pretty calm and I could practically feel the weather outside. I was listening to the girls talking when the electricity turned off. It wasn't an EMP, we had banned those from being used when yellows started showing how powerful they were. I could still feel the electricty pullsing from the Medical Center. The girls around me started to panic, scared as to why it would be shut down.
"Okay everyone calm down," I yelled over the panicked noise. Everyone shut up a second later. In the silence, I felt around the camp trying to figure out what was going on. As I reached out, I could feel the team of psi and humans roaming through the camp. I instantly recognized what was going on and turned to the girls. "Everyone get your shoes on."
"What?" Ashley asked.
"Get your shoes on. If something happened to the lights then something is happening, get your shoes on now," I ordered. The girls snapped and started pulling their shoes on. I reached down and grabbed the shoes I had been given by the camp controllers. As soon as the last girl had pulled her shoes on, the door was yanked open and two men barged into the room. Both men were dressed in heavy military gear, and were wearing lights on their heads so they could see in front of them. They had large rifles, but they slung them towards their backs as they walked into the cabin.
Several girls screamed and everyone moved back away from the door. The men looked around, and one of them spotted me, and seemed to recognize me because he started talking to me. "Is there any PSF's in here?" I shook my head. "Anyone missing?" I shook my head again. He grabbed his walkie talkie, and pressed it against his mouth. "Cabin twenty seven is good. All are accounted for and we have no extra's. We also found Ava. Over."
"Copy that, over," Mirable's voice said over the line and I felt a pang of joy in her voice. I smiled to myself. The two men secured their guns on their backs.
"Alright ladies, the electricity should return in a minute," one of the men said and the lights flicked back on. I blinked in surprise and covered my eyes. After a second I removed them and my vision cleared.
The two men had turned off their head lamps, and were looking at the girls in the room, who were staring back at them curiously, and I understood their curiosity. The two men wore flags of Canada on their arms, not United States flags. This was the first time these men were seeing kids in a camp, and this could be the first time the girls had seen Canadians. I could see the men more clearly in the light of the cabin. The two men were brunette with pearly white skin. If you looked hard enough you could see that they looked like siblings.
"Okay, everyone please have a seat," the man on the right said gently. Girls looked at him curiously. "We are going to pass some things out to you, and you would probably be more comfortable sitting down." They continued looking at them.
"Sit down," I ordered, and the girls quickly followed the order. Both men looked at me horrified, and I shrugged a shoulder. I sat down next to Sam, and my arm brushed up against hers. Her memories came springing through my mind, but I ignored them. I pulled out of her mind, and finished sitting down.
I knew from day one that Ruby had fucked up her memories a long time ago, I even had a rough estimance of when it happened. Ashley had mentioned that they were close, but eight months ago they had stopped being friends for no apparent reason. Though it was nice to confirm that she hadn't been mean for no reason.
"What are your names?" I asked gently, knowing the girls wouldn't ask.
"Zeb," the man on the right side said beinding over slightly to get the backpack on his shoulders off.
"Micheal," the other man said with a small wave. I stood up and walked up next to Micheal. I would have used my powers to simply tell his mind what I was about to say aloud, but I didn't know if he knew about that specific power. "What's up?"
"Can you hold off the discussion for a second? I need to talk to one of the girls alone," I whispered to him, and he nodded. I turned my gaze to Sam and said, "we need to talk." I left no room to argue, and the two men got out of the way as we walked past them through the door.
Outside was a flurry of movement. PSF's, stripped of their guns and masks, were walking past in chains. They were headed towards the dining hall to be separated out. There were more Canadian military personnel, as well as Americans walking around. It seemed that all the cabins had been taken, and the attackers were slowly weeding out everyone else. There was still fear in the air, but it was slowly disappating. I led Sam around to the side of the cabin, her looking confused the entire time.
"What's going on?"
"You remember the girl who had been here before me, Ruby? She was an orange, with the ability to create, main and destory memories. Eight months ago she accidentally removed the memories containing her from your head after you got into a fight," I said, and she looked at me shocked.
"You're lying," she stuttered out.
"I'm not. I read your file weeks ago Sam. I know that you have a perfect memory. Can you tell me right here, right now, that there aren't holes in your memory, things that don't make sense. Ashley told me you and Ruby were the best of friends until after she whipped your memory, and she didn't know why. You don't fake that kind of distrust." I let her pause to think through it and she started to panic.
"Why are there holes in my memory? I know I wasn't sleeping, because I remember my dreams?"
"Sam?" I asked and I saw her starting to panic fully trying to remember her repressed memories. I touched her arm, and returned her memories to her, and though she seemed to panic, I knew that it was the right thing to do. If she had continued to push her memory as hard as she had, she could have accidentally given herself an anerysum. She doubled over and started dry heaving, and I stepped back to give her some space, knowing personal space wouldn't be wanted right now. After a minute of dry heaving, she stood up, and looked at me scared.
"Where is she?" Sam asked.
"Honestly, I don't know. A while ago, scientists found out that there are certain frequencies that only one color can hear that none of the rest can. Like a green can hear one frequency, but an orange can't. Once they were able to figure that out, and perfected it, they came to the camps to find kids whose real color classification didn't match the ones in the system. The children's league came in before they could be found."
"How many were found here?"
"Two oranges hiding amongst the greens."
"Are you a part of the children's league?"
"No."
"Then who are you a part of?"
"International Protection and Investigative Agency For The PSI People, or IPAIPA for short. It's a international funded organization based in Canada that's been looking out for the psi for the last year and a half. Gage and I came in last week to help breach the camp from the inside. It's why I've been disapperaing from time to time. I was one of the first psi agents in the organization, but I monitor one of the cities we use for relocation after we succesfully take a camp."
"Why would they put you in charge of a relocation city?"
"Because I'm a black, and I ran a small town's worth of people for a few years," I answered and saw her eyebrows raise. Sensing that she didn't believe me, I levitated a stick in front of her and set it ablaze. She stepped back surprised, and I put out the blaze. The ashes slowly floated to the ground. "I want to tell you that you're safe now, but you're not going to believe me. In a second, we're going back into the cabin, and I'm going to leave you alone. You're going to get new clothes, and you're going to eat the food given, and the second you need to talk to me about what happened, I will talk to you."
I turned and started walking towards the door, Sam, in a daze, walked behind me. We walked together back into the room, and we sat down on my bed together. There hadn't been enough room in Zak and Micheals bags for spare clothes, but there was enough room for cookies apparently which had been spread amongst the girls, who looked happy to be eating something that wasn't the dining hall's slope.
"Really? Cookies?" I asked.
"Okay, they were the only thing that we could make fast, and the purples have enough seeds to feed everyone here six times over," Micheal said defensively. "Besides, if you were in a camp wouldn't you want cookies?" I thought about it and nodded.
"True, when I was in Tundra all they would give us was a combination of beef and vegetables from the garden that tasted like dog turds, and I would perfer eating that to the food served here," I said, taking the offered bags from Micheals hand.
"Geez," Zeb said.
"Wish she was lying," Mirbable said from behind Micheal and Zeb. Both sprung up surprised. She gave them a pointed look, before walking into the cabin. She was dressed in her usual camp taking outfit. Her hair was pulled back, and she was carrying several backpacks as well as clear ones above her head with her powers. She gave me a pointed look and Sam and I moved off our bed so she could set the bags down on my bed.
"Hey, guys, why don't you go wait outside?" I asked the two men. They nodded in understanding and walked out of the building pulling the door closed behind them. Mirable walked over to the bed and grabbed some of the backpacks.
"I'm going to keep this very simple. The backpacks have clean clothes, food and water. The clear bags are meant for the clothes you got here. I'm not going to force you to change now, but I need the clothes before you leave."
"When is that going to be?" Ashley asked.
"Within the next couple of hours," I said and she looked at me surprised.
"Are we going home?" she asked, and the small child who had been driven here so long ago peeked out for a second.
"Not back to your childhood homes. We're going to Canada for the foreseeable future. Some of your families are there right now, but not all of them. We're trying to find them, but it takes time," I answered, and I saw her as well as several others looking confused. Mirable passed out the backpacks and the plastic packets.
"Ava and I are a part of the International Protection and Investigative Agency For The PSI People, or IPIAPP for short. It's been their goal to help find, teach and protect the psi people. As well as investigate any crimes commited on or by themm. We've been raiding camps since its inception."
"How long has that been?" Vanessa asked.
"Since it was created? About a year, but it took them afew months to start raiding camps. Thurmond was on the last of the list for a multidue of reasons. There were other camps out there that were worse, and we've been needing to try and find kids in other countries and tribes wandering around."
"What's going to happen to us?" Ashley asked.
"Like I said, you're going to Canada for the foreseeable future. Some of you will be placed with family member's we've managed to track down, one's who didn't hand you in by the way. Old neighbors of your's. Some of you will be paired with another girl in the cabin and will live with her family. You'll be entered into the advanced school program we have for greens, and be placed into a severe therapy system. You'll only be released from the program and placed into once a week therapy once you've proven you're not a threat to yourself or anyone around you. Every single one of you have had a hard life, and I want you to know you won't be treated like monsters in New Rose Hills, you'll be treated like kids who've gone through something terrible and are in need of help." The girls paused for a second and I could tell they were grateful. "Any other questions?" They shook their heads and Mirable smiled at them. She grabbed the bags and walked out of the cabin with them. Everyone sat down confused.
"Hey Ava. How did the Canadian's figure out about us?" Ashley asked.
"I told them. I was in a camp for a few months, Tundra. The nights the silvers, oranges, yellows, and purples were pulled from this camp, it happened all over the country. The kids at Tundra were able to take over the guards and take the camp. We hid there for so long, helping others occasionally. It took us forever to go into raiding camps. We didn't have any back up then, but we do now."
I sat back down on my bed, and leaned my head against the wall. I took a deep breath and felt around the camp with my powers. The kids in the medical center were slowly being led out of the building and taken to trucks that would leave almost immideatly. The warehouse was being checked of its supplies, and the tower had been fully taken by the search teams and its former inhabitants were being divided and the first group was being shipped out. Micheal came in a minute after Mirable left, leaving Zeb to watch outside. He looked around the room akwardly, before I tapped the spot next to me. He walked the short distance before sitting down.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Montreal, origionally. Shipped up to New Rose Hills when my sister started presenting with yellow abilities a day after you were picked up. The school system is really good over there."
"Thanks. I helped design it myself," I said proudly.
"Hey Ava?" Ashely asked, finally snapping out of her shock.
"Yes dear," I said looking up at her.
"When is everyone here going on trial?"
"Almost immideatly. We started gathering evidence a couple months ago when we started planning the evacuation. So there is more than enough to get them on evidence alone, but if you wanted to testify, no one would be opposed."
"Thank you," she said somewhat shocked. "I have a question. Could we ask for someone to be cleared? There's a nurse, Pat Dunn, I was worried about him. He's actually one of the nicer nurses." There were several other's commenting on how good he was.
"I know him actually. He's one of the nurses who we've cleared when we took another camp. We sent him up here to keep an eye on his brother. Do any of you have anyone else cleared? If they are good people they'll probably be pardoned. I've seen it happen before."
"Really. How many times?" she asked, hope in her voice.
"Once or twice a camp. More often than not they have family members who are psi and are trying to find them, or are just genuinely wanting to help out. Heck the foster dad I've been staying with the last year was at Tundra before I showed up. So there's a chance they'll be forgivin." She smiled her thanks, and sat back down on her bed.
I smiled at her, and looked at the door. Despite me being highly ranked, I wasn't let out of the cabin until the bathroom break right before we left. It was a quick trip, then we were lined up in front of our cabin as well as cabins twenty two through thirty. We were going to be traveling in groups of two seventy to keep things simple. There was quiet talking as we went along, but a hush went amongst the kids as the truck that was about to take us away stopped in front of the cabins.
"Come on," one of the guards called, and started pushing kids into the backs of trailers. I waited for everyone to get on the trailer first so that I would be closest to the door in case something happened. As I sat down, I looked around and noticed that the kids were extremely happy. As soon as the last girl hit the bed of the trailer, the door slammed shut behind her, and we started pulling forward with the two cars who were acting as our guards. There were a couple guards with us as well, but they were mostly to make sure we didn't hurt one of the others in the trailer with us.
I could feel us pass through the gates, and the girls who had seen it sighed in relief. I looked down at my backpack, and pulled it close to me. Mine was different from the others because I had my phone and a small speaker that had been designed by Ava and her team. I pulled out my phone, connected it to the speaker, and hit play on one of the playlists I had created. Music started playing immediately and every single kid's head snapped toward us.
"Why are you playing music?" Sam asked, and I shrugged
"Might as well, because we don't have enough material to talk for ten hours," I said with a shrug.
"Couldn't that be heard?"
"Not unless they are a psi, its a white noise frequency," I explained.
"Yeah we can't hear it," Zeb explained.
"Oh."
"Anyway talk if you want, or you can put in a song request," I said and leaned my head against the side of the trailer. The girls seemed eager to put in requests of songs that they hadn't heard in a while. That's how we spent the next few hours, the kids asking for song requests, or questions about our futures. They were interested in just about everything and were entertained by the stories the guards and I had.
We made a few stops for gas but overall we didn't stop for very long until we hit the Canadian border, where we had to be stopped to check our ID's against the database and to move to the Toronto airport buses that were on loan to us. I was used to the Canadian countryside, but the girls looked out of the windows in awe. I smiled at them and just waited as we drove up to Toronto.
When we finally pulled into Chelsea Hotel, I saw Macy standing in front of the hotel. She looked stressed, and I couldn't blame her. She was still in charge of the hotel, and there had to be at least a few thousand people coming in at one time. Zeb had us stand up and walk out of the bus. Macy smiled at me as I hopped off the bus.
"Come on everyone," she called out and started directing us inside. Several of the girls looked at me.
"We're meeting the parents first then we're going to sleep," I said with a shrug, and walked into the lobby. There were a couple people milling around who were shocked by the appearance of nearly three hundred girls, but I didn't let it stop me from being bothered. We walked as a group into one of the old ballrooms we had used so long ago. It didn't have any beds in it this time around, we had enough rooms available this time, but there were people inside of it.
Most of the adults in the room were gathered around tables. They seemed to watch us as we walked into the room. Micheal and Zeb, who had been with us since Thurmond, led cabin twenty seven over to one of the tables near the edge of the room. I couldn't see any of my family members, but I could see Elise standing in the crowd. The old woman had come a long way since I had met her so long ago. She worked at a library despite her age, and her slightly crooked back had straightened up. She smiled at me and gave me a wave. Zeb noticed her instantly. I stepped out of the line and walked up to her.
"Calvin and the girls are still in Mexico, so they sent me up here. They're fine, they just wanted to finish a couple things up," Elise said as I walked up to her. My smile dropped. The girls had gone to Mexico to help out some people injured in a tsunami, and should have been back to New Rose Hills a few days ago.
"Oh, okay," I said, slight disappointment in my voice.
"Don't worry. They'll be home in a few days," she said with a smile. I looked over and saw the rest of the girls in cabin twenty seven start to be paired up with their new guardians. I saw some of their faces slowly dawn at recognizing people they knew from their childhoods. Though others were confused at the partnering.
"Come on ladies," Zeb said, once everyone had been partnered up, introductions had been made and room numbers for the nights had been given. "We have to start getting ready for the next group." Several people nodded, and others grunted in agreement. Elise and I looked at each other before leading the group away towards the elevators that would take us up to our rooms.
No one argued about it as we took turns riding up to the third floor and into rooms that were right next to one another. My heart hurts for these kids. The emotional wiplash in the last fourteen hours was astronomical, and now they were going to be split up. Sure they were going to be in the same city, but they probably weren't going to see each other every single moment of the day like they had for the last six years.
The rooms we were staying in were pretty nice all things considering, and it must have taken a lot of energy to get rooms next to one another for the kids in the same cabin. I was looking out the window as Sam approached me, she had just jumped out of the shower and was dressed in new clothes that the elder Ruby Daly had brought. I was quite surprised that they had been paired, but since her granddaughter and Sam had been best friends for years it made sense.
"Hey. I got news about Ruby, she's in California. It took Cate a while to get back to me."
"Is she good?"
"Yeah. She's doing well. She's joined an already formed team, and she's doing well with them."
"Do you trust Cate?"
"Yes. She's a close friend, and I know as soon as Ruby is in any form of danger, she'll be put on a direct path here."
"Thank you," she said with a smile.
"Are you excited to see Lucas and Mia again?"
"Of course," she said, and I could practically see her exhaustion.
"Go get some sleep. Your new life starts tomorrow." She smiled and walked over to her bed. Elise smiled at me and laid back down in her bed. I waited for only a second, before going to the bed and lying down myself, excited for tomorrow.