ALIENS

When Liesl and I reach the secret mirror room on the top floor, we find that Jimin and Taehyung are already there. They wrestle each other, their faces scrunched up in concentration, holding back laughter. Jimin ends up on top of Taehyung, I can't see what Taehyung does, but it makes Jimin burst out laughing. They end up rolling on the ground in laughter with tears in their eyes. I walk over to their sides and crouch down, amused. "What happened this time?"

Taehyung makes a straight line with his lips and raises his eyebrows, shaking in laughter and waiting for Jimin to respond. But Jimin is looking at Taehyung and is waiting as well. "Bb-b-buh--" Taehyung stutters, "--PFFT."

"AHAHAHAHA!" Jimin's face is a beam of happiness and laughter. I look at Liesl and shrug, and she grins.

Not long later, Yoongi, Hoseok, and Namjoon climb down the air vent and drop in a casual roll. We've been meeting for a couple weeks now, and getting to the top floor is no problem. Jimin and Taehyung notice the others and try to compose themselves as they stand up, brushing off dust from their clothes.

Yoongi sighs, shrugging with palms up in the air. "No questions needed."

Hoseok rushes over to the 'music box' and turns on some funky music. The room is filled with happy vibes. Jin and Kookie arrive shortly, but this time, Jin jumps down from the air vent first and helps Kookie down. I frown in concern; at first, I think Kookie is injured, but then I see the computer cradled in his arms.

I go over to Kookie. His face is composed and serious. "Oh my goodness," I breathe, "I almost forgot about this."

"Me too," he chuckles faintly. "Listen, I have an idea..."

"Everyone," Jin calls, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice over the music, "come hither! Our young'un has brilliant thoughts to share." Jin turns back around and winks and Kookie and I. I laugh.

Hoseok stops the music and skips to the center of the room and plops down. Namjoon shakes his head and sighs. "Jin, nobody talks like that anymore... it's 7019..."

We sit in a big circle and all look at Kookie, who's scrolling through the computer. The soft blue pulsing light illuminates his pale clear skin and big, round dark eyes. His eyebrows furrow in concentration. "Alrighty guys," Kookie says, pushing the computer aside and looking up, "we need to talk about the teachers."

"YES," I exclaim, slamming my hand on the floor in front of me. Jin who sits next to me gives me a strange, half frightened/half weirded-out look. "This is what I was just thinking. We need to bring them back. This iS--"

"Ah, ah," Kookie interrupts, putting his hand up to stop me. The air is caught in my lungs and my words in my throat begging to be spoken. He has a subtle smirk on his serious face. "No interruptions from the crowd, please." He clears his throat. "Where was I?

"Liesl, Emmalie--" I snort when he says my actual name "--and I can all tell you that the teachers of this ship were never like the way they are now before. They were all brilliant great human beings that were chosen to raise and guide our generation to colonize successfully on Plan C. When Mars was in chaos and disaster, they were the heroes that risked their own lives to save countless others. They are all pretty much our parents, since Emma and I were like half a year old when we boarded this ship, and Liesl was literally like two seconds old.

"Anyway, we have just over a month left before arriving at Plan C. If we don't do anything, these teachers, our parents, our heroes, will be forever lost in General Rudale's reign, and guess what will happen when we start living on Plan C? They're gonna control everything and make a system with them in absolute power and it's gonna suck. Heck, we might not even make it to Plan C if the teachers continue to grow worse at this rate. They might just destroy us before we arrive."

"This is literally what I was just thinking about in Astronomy--"

"hEy," Kookie says, pursing his lips in mock disappointment. "Can somebody take this young lady outside? She's trying to take credit for my brilliant ideas." Yoongi and Jin snicker beside me.

I cross my arms and raise my eyebrows defiantly. "This is a perfect example of what will happen if we let their teachers continue their rule. People like Kookie will be super bossy and make things so unfair."

"Kkhhhh," Kookie sighs. "Anyway, what I've been trying to say before Emma interrupted me, is we need a good plan to overthrow General Rudale. But first, we need to figure out exactly how General Rudale is controlling all the teachers. We need to observe them more closely, know how they think, what they want. Once we understand them better, we can execute our plan. We have a chance, guys. We have something they don't."

"Friendship?" Taehyung suggests.

"Yeah," Kookie laughs, "that's cute, but we also have the computer! With more study I'm sure I can figure out all the forms of communication it offers! That means we could possibly get help from outside the ship to beat General Rudale!"

"Yeaa!" Hoseok cheers. Yoongi nods and lets out a smile.

"Okay," Namjoon says slowly, "so what's the plan?"

"Ahh." Kookie glances at the floor, scratching the back of his head and says in a smaller voice, "Well, I haven't figured that out yet..."

Everyone laughs warmly. "That's ok," Namjoon says, smiling at Kookie. "But hey, we have a pretty good outline! We can definitely work with that. Good job."

Kookie blushes fiercely. "Yeah, yeah, and also, look at this..." he turns to his computer, does some super fast typing, and shows the screen to us.

The screen shows what looks like a map of a section of the universe. There's a dot labeled 92-653 (which is our ship) and a ship labeled 83-218.

83-218. That's Andromeda 83. But didn't their ship explode to pieces? I watch Andromeda 83's dot marked green and our ship's dot move in a steady pace towards a bigger dot, labeled Cassiopeia. Plan C.

"That's impossible," Yoongi mutters, speaking the same thoughts before me. Everyone watches the genius work his brain. He leans closer to the computer's glowing screen, squinting at it with his mouth parted slightly. "It looks like 83 is going faster than this ship. But all of Andromeda watched in our emergency hubs, right before our eyes, that 83 exploded and was destroyed completely. This must be an outdated map."

"That's what I figured," Kookie says, "until I saw this." He types a few more commands, and we watch in a horrific awe as dozens of other ships marked with green dots loom closer to our ship, on track to Plan C. We're ... surrounded.

"Andromeda 83 boarded our ship because it was the only one nearby!" I gasp. "And Andromeda 83 and our ship are the only known successful ships to have escaped Mars in the past 30 years! We were told other ships didn't make it this far. We were told we were alone. The teacher didn't detect any ships nearby. And--" I stop to catch my breath and point to the screen. "--all these ships are older than ours. 54-817, 48-113, 60-726... They left Mars years before we did. How come they're only up to here and not at Plan C already?"

"The real question," Kookie says quietly, "is why they're hiding from us. Teachers didn't detect them but our outdated old computer found them. This computer is the loophole, the weapon they don't have. And when we go faster or slower, they do the same. When we drift slightly to the left, they follow."

"It goes back to the emergency hubs," Yoongi gasps. All the other Andromeda boys stare at Yoongi, their faces dawning with realization. Yoongi quickly explains to Kookie and I. "Our generals divided us into groups the day we evacuated our ship, groups to use the 5 working emergency hubs we had, which can fly in space for a limited 48 hours. All 5 hubs are controlled by the main hub which the generals used. All we could do at our hubs was watch our ship crumble. And almost all too suddenly, Andromeda exploded." Yoongi's face darkens. "They could've set the screen up to make us all believe that our ship was gone. And the hundreds of our crew that didn't make it out in time died in there. The other 10 emergency hubs 'weren't working'. They must've faked the entire thing. Andromeda 83 must still be alive and running."

Kookie and I stare at each other in shock. Hundreds of people? Their generals told them hundreds of people died in the explosion?

"And now Andromeda 83 is hiding after we boarded this ship," Jin says, all laughter drained from his face. "Why, though? To spy? To take over? Maybe all of them?"

"I-" I stammer, "I remember the day I bumped into General Rudale. His face changed into something... not human. Do you guys suppose whatever possessed Rudale just slipped in that moment? Something alien-like?"

Dead silence fills the room. Cold begins to seep into my veins. "I remember something too," Jimin murmurs softly. His eyes are focused on his small hands folded in his lap. "Once, in Andromeda, General Suzie grabbed my jaw. She almost looked like she was gonna kill me. Some deep anger possessed her suddenly and her fingernails grew into claws and dug into my face and neck. But then she let go, and I didn't see her since."

I start to shiver. I've heard of stories about aliens, and possessing spirits, but that was just little stories to scare us. They weren't supposed to be real.

"How are we supposed to defeat General Rudale and his crew," I say slowly and quietly, "if he has hundreds of backup at his beck and call?"

Jungkook slowly grins and taps the computer screen. "I've already called a few friends for help, they should be coming up soon."

On cue, the computer screen blacks out, and sparks back to life with a couple of faces staring through the screen.