AngelicSpring cannot believe how hectic the last few weeks of half term was.
Geddit? First line of The Start of Pain?
Guess not.
Anyhoo, I am finally updating because we have a one-week break from school! If you ask me, that is way too little time to compensate for all those times spent in learning about ventilation, attachment, bonding and surds. So yeah. And it's Halloween! Happy Halloween, everybody! Or am I tad late at the greeting?
Thank you, amazing people of the 39 Clues fandom! Long live The 39 Clues fandom! XD Thank you so much, Shimmering Icicles (Yes, she is, actually. Remember Hamilton's weapon she made? XD I made her like it, I dunno why. Haha. Sorry 'bout that.), magicdemi-god223 (fellow fangirl? One, two, three... *fangirl squeal*), addicted2reading9 (run, my Natan friend. Just run – before he sees you), emmelinekat (haha. I don't know actually. Thank you for saying that though. I'm sure they are still there. People would stick with you amazing person! I know I would!), NatalieKFan (don't I know it! It's going to get worse for Dan... and some other people actually.) and J.L (I see. XD Is King Arthur real? So is Merlin? Or are all those fictional? Thanks for the information!)
Now you know why Ian hates me so much. Natan is just so... irresistible. If I suddenly 'go missing', you know who to blame. I'm not saying any names but here's a clue: it starts with Ian and ends with Kabra.
Oh yeah. In case anybody forgot, I don't own The 39 Clues and I really don't I ever will. Haha.
Read on, my amazing friends. Read on. Enjoy, 'cause that's what matters most!
oooooOooooo
Chapter 13
Dan handed Natalie a piece of sashimi wedged in between two chopsticks which the girl took gratefully. Apparently, using chopsticks and walking inside a Japanese restaurant is very new to her as well.
Ian expressionlessly fumed as this routine of theirs continued for another minute or so.
Jonah frowned. "I'm sorry, but this is gonna sound selfish, but seeing as how I-dawg isn't about to say something just yet, I'll just start, 'kay?" Dan nodded with his mouth full. Natalie watched him with polite confusion like she was sure stuffing food in your mouth was wrong, but she wasn't so sure. Jonah gave her a funny look. "See, the antidote for Ange is actually inside Nat...alie," Jonah added slowly, remembering how Natalie hated being called Nat. Natalie didn't even bat an eyelid.
Dan nodded.
Hamilton whistled. "Whew. This is actually messing up my appetite. I was pretty sure I'd finish more than two bowls, but can't even get through the first one!" He chuckled good-naturedly. "Oops –" he fished his vibrating phone out of his jeans pocket, "gotta take – Whoa." He quickly pressed the ACCEPT button. "Sinead? What's wrong? No, of course, I know something's wrong. Why? 'Cause you're calling me. No, I didn't mean that. Look, are we seriously going to argue about this now?"
Dan looked at Jonah with raised eyebrows which Jonah returned with an 'I-don't-know' shrug. Ian looked mildly interested. Natalie, unsurprisingly, looked confused and lost.
"Look, Sinead. Sinead – No, I'm listening but – Sinead -? Hey... Oh my Thomas, Sinead! Would you let me finish?" Hamilton briskly and quite harshly rubbed his face with his palm, the way he always did when he's agitated and/or annoyed. Or, as for this case, a little of both. "What is going on? Yeah. As in right now." Hamilton listened for a few seconds. He suddenly jumped up from his seat as if the cushion caught fire and erupted with spikes.
Before Dan and the others know what was happening, he was out of the restaurant.
xxxOOOxxx
"What'd he say?" Amy asked. "I mean, aside from the fact that you were arguing again."
Sinead huffed an aggravated breath out. "Gods, he makes me so infuriated! I can't believe I actually have him on my speed dial!" She glared at her phone, looking as if she was about to fling it out of sight. Down that filthy lake yards away from them, preferably.
Amy glanced at Jake and Evan, knowing that Sinead hadn't at the least bit heard her question. "Does that mean they're coming?" she asked them.
Jake snorted. "If it's beauty queen who asked Holt, I'm sure he's on a plane right about now."
Sinead heard that. "I cannot believe you made me call him," she accused flatly, like they just made her drink out of the toilet.
"And I can't believe a Tomas and an Ekat would actually date, much less get along."
Sinead snapped up at that. Okay. So, as much as it wounds her pride to call Hamilton for help, that subject was kind of a touchy thing. "People change," she said stiffly.
Victoria chuckled bitterly, clutching her arm tighter to her chest. "Touchy, touchy. Did I hit a nerve?"
Sinead glowered at her. "Look. I know you're nearly dying, but I wouldn't hesitate kicking you hard." Victoria merely shot her a toothy grin like she actually wanted to see her try.
Amy rubbed her temples. "We can't do anything right now because the whole of the Vespers' treasured task force is hot on our heels and half of the Interpol is working for them. So would you please try to stay alive before they could actually arrive?" she pleaded, looking at Sinead imploringly.
Sinead gave her an annoyed look, but stiffly nodded anyway.
"Thank you," Amy said sincerely.
Evan pushed his glasses further up his nose. "I wonder, if they got Natalie safely back," he mused.
"Huh. I didn't hear any bickering in the background," Sinead noted, "which should have been a constant especially with Dan and Natalie in the same building."
Amy bit her lip. "Maybe Natalie's asleep or something," she suggested.
"Or, maybe Ian had their mouths duct-taped," Jake chimed indifferently.
All of them fell silent as they pondered on that statement and its possibility. Then, out of the blue, they burst out laughing. Victoria frowned at all of them. "Ugh, Cahills are so weird," she groaned, slumping her head back on the filthy tree trunk.
xxxOOOxxx
Alistair calmly sipped his tea as he watched Hamilton pace back and forth. "You're going to have a hard time when turbulence comes, you know," he confided. Hamilton pretended not to hear him.
"Oh, let him fall flat on his butt. That'll wake up his senses," Jonah said dismissively, flipping through a celebrity magazine. His eyes widened at a particular article. "They broke up again? No surprise there." He clucked his tongue in disapproval.
Alistair raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing.
"Amy is so stupid," Dan muttered. He clasped his hands to his chest and fluttered his eyelids. "'Oh, that poor Vesper girl who tried to murder all of us in one go. Oh, Sinead, why don't we help her out?'" he said in a high-pitched voice, obviously to sound like Amy. Natalie giggled.
Natalie giggled.
It was as if that one action pushed the pause button and the world rotated much, much slower than before. Jonah dropped his magazine to his lap. Hamilton stopped pacing. Ian just sighed like a doctor who was faced with a disease he can never cure and rested his forehead on his hand. Alistair looked amused since he had heard the whole story three minutes ago, especially the part about Natalie being so un-Natalie. But, seeing everything in person is really something. For example, Natalie willingly sitting beside Dan, or eating airplane food even the nuts in the cute little packaging, or wearing the same outfit she had on for the last six hours, or most importantly, not calling Dan Daniel. It was all so disorienting.
Dan seemed unfazed however. He glanced at Natalie. "Don't you think my sister's the biggest idiot in the world?" he asked.
"I think she's nice," Natalie said honestly.
Jonah unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up, his hands held up in a defensive position. "Okay, I can't take this. That," he pointed at Natalie, "will require heaps of time for me to get used to it. And actually adapt." He strode of to the lavatory of Alistair's private jet.
"So, Natalie, my dear girl," Alistair started. Ian shot him a warning look which Alistair ignored. Ignoring people is turning into a habit with the Cahills, actually. Natalie wrinkled her nose uncomfortably before looking at him. The only person she trusts at the moment is Dan, and she has no plans whatsoever on trusting other people in the nearest future. "How are you feeling?"
Natalie pursed her lips, considering the question. "I'm fine, thank you," she said in a measured tone, careful not to say the wrong things.
"How much of your, ah, old life do you remember, exactly?" Alistair's eyes twinkled with some unknown motif.
Natalie looked at Dan apprehensively which he returned with a 'go-on-and-speak' nod. "Well... My mother is Isabel," she said thoughtfully. "My father is..." Ian listened intently and Hamilton did the same. "I'm sorry. I don't know," Natalie sighed helplessly.
"How come she could only remember Isabel?" Jonah asked Alistair, walking back towards his seat. He knows that somehow an Ekat-worthy science is behind this. "How did they manage to erase a part of her memory and replace it with minimal information?" Jonah paused, looking disbelievingly at his hands. "Whoa! Did somebody just write down what I said? 'Cause that sounded really smart!"
Alistair took in a deep breath, setting his tea down and placing both his hands on top of his cane. "Well, I must say, this is an ingenious experiment the Vespers had concocted. Not that I'm saying it's good," Alistair said quickly when he noticed Ian's look of murder. "But, in terms of psychological discoveries, this is certainly a breakthrough. Do any of you know about the Multi-store Model of the Memory?"
Ian merely raised an eyebrow in agreement. He did remember studying that in his advanced, home-schooled Psychology GCSE. Hamilton, however, stopped with his pacing and glanced at the old Korean dude attentively. "I know that chiz!" he exclaimed, tapping his forehead with two fingers. "The one where there are three stages in the memory. Like, first one is sensory, next is short-term and the last is long-term." Jonah and the others looked at him with their jaw dropped as far as they would go, completely dumbfounded. Ian chuckled lightly at the turn of events. Hamilton returned their looks of incredulity with a shrug. "Why don't you try dating an Ekat and go on dates on science conventions?"
"TMI," Jonah replied disgustedly.
Alistair found it funny. "Yes, well, the Vespers might have used that belief to alter Natalie's long-term memory."
"And since her short-term memory is working just fine," Ian continued, now seeing the situation as his mind raced for the possibilities of returning Natalie's memory. "They used that to get new information in her long-term by rehearsing new memories in her short-term until they get successfully transferred."
"Correct," Alistair nodded seriously. "They just proved the importance of repeating information to be successfully recalled later on. They also proved that the memory is actually made up of parts and you could damage one part without damaging the others."
Ian perked up, remembering something he nearly got wrong (but, of course, he didn't) on the module. "But, that's one of the biggest flaws of the multi-store model. Rehearsal isn't exactly the only and most important method to get information stored into the long-term memory. Like, when you keep on reading your notes and you can't remember anything in the end, compared to when you're reading a magazine and you remember every gossip. It doesn't completely work that way," he argued, speaking so quickly that Alistair was the only one who understood what he was saying.
Alistair's face darkened. "Unless...?" he prodded, waiting for Ian to understand what he means.
"Unless?" Ian thought about that for a moment, feeling as though he was back in Mr Felth's study. It was like being quizzed under the scrutinizing eyes of his tutor. "Unless, the information was semantic – that is, highly meaningful or relevant to the person." Ian shot Natalie a shocked look which Natalie returned with a wide-eyed look of bewilderment. "They confused Natalie, so that she was utterly left in the dark about who she really was, and they pretended to be the small light. Naturally, she would follow that thoughtlessly."
"A rather poetic summarisation of what they could have done, but yes," Alistair said sadly. "I believe that's we can deduce at the moment."
Hamilton pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Let me get this right. They injected something in Natalie that made her lose her memories – as in completely – and when she finally did forget everything, they replaced them with whatever it is she remembers now –"
"Like, Satan's spawn being her older brother instead of Cobra here," Dan suggested. Ian glowered at the little punk. Dan shrugged good-naturedly.
Hamilton nodded. "Yeah, sure. They replaced her memories by repeating those lies to her until she remembers them instead." He looked at Ian and Alistair. "At least that's how I understood it."
"So, what does that tell us about helping Natalie?" Jonah asked, seeing nothing helpful about the whole psychology talk. Seriously, he feels as though his brain is going to blow up or something.
Ian's eyes gleamed, but not the very dangerous kind. "It means that if we could reverse whatever method they did, we could restore Natalie's memories," he explained, biting his lip.
Dan whistled. "Wow, that sounds like a lot of work," he told them. "That raven-haired dude told me TLC should be enough."
Ian looked fiercely at the younger kid, his fingers clenched into fists. He looked as though he was ready to beat the living daylights out of Dan which is actually what he was thinking at the moment along with a few choice words. "I'm hoping that isn't going to come from you," he growled.
Jonah and Hamilton snickered at the thought.
Dan narrowed his eyes at them. "Will you stop thinking those kinds of things? It's disturbing and most of all, gross," he shuddered. "And where's my thanks? I got her back and I get you wanting to kill me every second you get. You're welcome," he said sarcastically.
Ian breathed a slow breath in as if he was doing yoga, or counting to ten. "Do you want me to contact Molly because I'm not even afraid to go there," he snapped grumpily.
Dan ignored the flush of warmth that spread from his neck up to his cheeks. He could still remember the horrible and relentless teasing he got from that one little letter. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said lamely. Natalie watched his expressions with deep curiosity.
"Ha!" Hamilton exclaimed, making all of them jump. "I remember that Molly person. Quite the persistent little girl, wasn't she?"
Jonah looked confused. "Was that the curly, red-head with the freckles and the braces?" he clarified.
"Nooo," Hamilton said slowly. "That's Erica. Molly's the blonde one with the flowery clothes." Hamilton mimed a long, flowing dress.
"Oh yeah!" Jonah slammed his fist to his palm. "Now, I remember! The chick who shows up every day because she 'needs help with Math'." Jonah made quotation marks in the air.
Dan shot all of them a nasty look. "In her defense," he cut in pointedly. "She did need help with Math."
Ian rolled his eyes. "Only an idiot would fall for that," he muttered.
"Thankfully, you are one," Dan retorted, crossing his arms over his chest.
"That's not even what I –" Ian sighed heavily. "I give up. Just mind your own business, Daniel. One false move and I swear, nobody will keep me from strangling the life out of you." He looked really serious that nobody even tried to reason with him.
Hamilton was curious, though. "Not even Amy?" he clarified. Ian shot him a silencing look. Hamilton held up his hands in surrender with a mouthed 'okay'.
oooooOooooo
Okay... re-reading this whole thing again and hoping that I didn't miss any grammatical mistakes or gods forbid, any factual mistakes. We went through the MSM and I hoped I understood enough to actually apply it correctly here. Any Psychology majors? Please feel free to scold me about the things I got wrong. XD For the rest, feel free to ask me any questions that were vague in this chapter. Oh and yeah, I made the Erica girl up, so a huge hello to any Ericas out there! Molly is that girl who asked Dan to the dance. XD
So... I am kind of writing a non-fanfiction fiction (which is actually just fiction) and I want to be really serious about it. I am serious about it, but I guess I need sheer dedication. I hope you guys would cheer me on.
That's pretty much it.
You thought I forgot about the Sneak Peek, didn't you? XD Here it is:
"Bummer," Jonathan commented drily, but he suddenly straightened at something Alex said. "But, wouldn't that be, 'The Council would have your neck'?" he pointed at Alex confusedly.
Alex glared at him. "I swear to everything that I have... If the Council doesn't kill you, I will."
Jonathan cracked a smirk. "Looking forward to it." He gave Alex a two-finger mock salute and left the room. He whistled a happy tune as he made his way to his room. Getting Alex all riled up like that is just the sprinkles to his huge serving of plans.
Please stay tuned, my amazing friends! XD
Much Love, Peace Out! Less Than Three!
AngelicSpring