This is a shorter chapter than usual, but I hope you enjoy and leave a review!
Jack was surfing the internet while in the back of his mind trying to come up with what to do. He didn't try too hard, though. He knew Sam or Astrid or Caine or one of those people were going to come up with the idea. Any minute now, they would call Jack back out of his room, ready to tell the amazing yet reckless plan that would work against all odds.
So Jack decided to wait it out by playing on the computers.
Except Jack stumbled upon a link that was going to complicate things.
"Guys…" Jack said. No one heard him.
"Guys!" Jack yelled while taking the laptop into the main room. Diana gave him a dirty look and shushed him, probably because Baby Leo was sleeping. Except he can't really be called a baby anymore, because he looked like he was almost two.
"Um, sorry for more bad news, but…" Jack trailed off as he started the YouTube clip. It was a news segment.
"Now we will join Sandra, who's the on-the-scene reporter for Perdido Beach Anomaly: Friend or Foe?" the anchorman said. Brianna snorted.
"I bet Howard could have come up with a better name than that," she said. Astrid shushed her.
"Thank you," the reporter named Sandra said. "There are many uprisings and strikes from people who believe the Anomaly kids should be protected. Except, half, if not more, of the population believes they should be killed or sent to a high security juvenile prison. I'm here with two different people who would like to share their opinions. First, we will go over to Luke Brassel."
Sandra handed her microphone to a boy who looked like he was about 12 with big glasses and buck teeth.
"I think they're awesome! Like super heroes!" Luke said. He was talking very loudly and had a high pitched voice. "You shouldn't kill them! Instead there should be action figures and a bunch of stuff for them and a movie like Star wars and stuff and I bet they're nice and stuff and I wish I was trapped in the dome cause it would be so fun with candy and cookies and just a bunch of kids and we could play tag like a huge tag game with over 300 kids and wow it must have been so much fun. Also, hi Leia! Leia is my sister she's probably super jealous of me right now. Hahahaha in your face Leia I got to be interviewed on TV!"
Sandra pried the microphone out of Luke's hand as he was still saying hi to his friends and family. She put on an exasperated smile.
"And now, over to Dr. Myers, who has a PhD in child psychology," Sandra said. She handed the microphone to a tall man wearing glasses and a lab coat. He was holding a clipboard for some reason.
"Thank you for letting me talk, Sandra," he said. "I have studied and made many hypotheses about what these kids have been going through, and to be completely honest, I don't think it's anything good. I got my hands on the personal files for many of the Coates children, and plenty of them were classified and sadists. Mix sadists with children that are just plain bullies, and you do not get a happy town. If any of you have seen the city of Perdido Beach, you will notice the graveyard, torn down houses, and the recently-destroyed church. These Anomaly children are a threat to our society, and need to be eliminated."
The clip ended. Jack noticed everyone was fuming with anger. He wondered who would start to yell first.
"I can't believe what they are doing," Astrid said angrily. "You all do notice it right? They chose a kid who no one would believe to represent us. To try and convince people that everyone who believes that we aren't murderous, vacuous criminals are fatuous themselves."
Jack closed the laptop and set it down. He sat Indian style on the ground and put his face in his hands.
"What are we going to do," he moaned.
"People are trying to guillotine us and the media is on their side," Diana muttered.
"We need to somehow show that you guys aren't evil and Drake is the evil one," Katie said.
"We also need to stop the General," Sam said.
"Why can't the real CIA help us?" Lana said and turned to Katie.
"Well, I don't know how they would react to me crawling back to them after escaping with the Anomaly kids, asking them to help you guys when half of the world believes you are, as Astrid puts it, 'murderous, vacuous criminals,'" Katie said.
"Well, we don't need their help," Caine said confidently, although he didn't look like he believed it.
"And I don't think they will guillotine us, or execute us on live TV or anything," Edilio said.
"Yeah, they probably won't execute us at all. Just send us to juvy, right?" Quinn asked. No one answered.
"I'm going to go get some air and check on Howard, Orc, Toto, and Dahra. They've been outside with Lily for a while," Albert said. He stood up, stretched, and climbed up the ladder outside.
"Well, we might as well join them outside. some fresh air would be-" Dekka started but was interrupted by a scream and a crash outside.