16 Fire Meets Ice

"What do you mean there are slight changes in plans?" I drawled, highly suspicious.

What was he getting at? I always hated it when Darren changed plans last moment. It tilted my sense of order. He would say the party is a week later then suddenly it's preponed to this evening. How can I ever get anything straight in the house when there was a confused maniac a.k.a my brother on the loose?

"I found Dad's notebook and he has written in instructions on how to shut down Breakfire Online," Darren rumbled through the phone. He was chewing on something. The crunch told me it was wafers. He loved wafers.

"What? And? What does it say?" Hope fully there was an easier way!

Darren paused to take another bite.

Crunch.

Swallow.

"How far are you in with the mission? Tell me that first," he ordered, piquing my interest even more and making me sigh exasperatedly.

"Not far…I managed to disable their Survival Mode, that's it."

He choked on his wafers. I could imagine the crumbs of it falling on his neatly ironed coat. Specks of dirty white on jet black. "You did what? You switched off everyone's survival mode? That means they won't be as aggressive and won't kill each other so easily. What is your plan, really? To kill them or to make them friends and start a reality show?"

I rolled my eyes. My life was already a reality show as it is. What could get worse?

"Don't you pity your sister? How do you expect me to do anything amidst 6 savage animals? I needed some space to breathe and think. This was the only way."

"Boys aren't animals," my brother defended.

I couldn't stop myself form shaking my head, "They are!"

"I'm a boy!"

"That makes you an animal too!" I yelled back.

"Then you are the sister of this animal!"

"A sister with brains, unlike her brother. Too cowardly to deal with problems himself," I shot back, surely hurting him now. Well, he deserved it. Which brother puts his little sister in the situation I was in right now?

"You're the worst brother ever," I whispered now, and it was the truth. That's what I thought then, at least.

His voice rasped as he laughed on the other side, "I know and I'm sorry. You're the worst too," he said to poke me further.

"How-"

"Never mind that now, did you guys see the news yet?" he shifted the subject, leaving me hanging.

"No…I don't think they remember how to switch channels. They just know how to play the CDs on the shelves," I said, remembering Ethan and Luca on the sofa the day before, passing the remote to and fro, trying to work something out.

"Okay. Okay, good! Don't let them figure out until I cut access to the news channels."

"Why?" I asked, glancing up. A few of the guards were staring at me now, wondering why I was taking so much time. One of them pointed at his watch, then off to the distance. I shifted my sight to where he was pointing and saw a boy running around the estate.

Adrien. Oh damn. If he sees me with a phone, he would know that I was planning something behind their backs.

"Make it fast Darren, before one of the boys find me talking to you," I hastily added.

"Okay okay," Darren replied, now more alert, "So look, the video of you and Kai went viral. The one where he tried to kill you. And the government has issued…." He continued and I listened, my eyes growing wide with every word. How did he let this happen? All these years of perfect reputation and suddenly everything comes crashing down.

I rubbed my forehead, "Well we are trying to kill them anyway, so what's new?"

"Thing is…in dad's note…he says that, to shut down the game, we just need to eliminate Adrien. Take him out and everything else related to the game shuts down automatically."

What? Out of all the six of them, Adrien?

"No…" I blurted. I had already decided that Adrien would be the last on my list. And here comes Dad's notes telling me that Adrien should be the only one on my kill list.

"Please Ashe. We're working on fixing the Beamers too, so that we can transport them back to the VR world. But none of the combinations till now are working….I wish you were here," Darren pouted, biting into another wafer.

"I can't be at two places at one time. For a while, try to do something on your own without my help, Darren!" I yelled at him in frustration. I can't kill Adrien already. There was a lot about him I had yet to know. Lots of things to still discover.

"I-"

The guard which had signaled at me before was now suddenly next to me and grabbed the phone from my hand. I reached for it out of reflex, "But I wasn't done-"

He placed the phone close and told Darren that he was sorry, but time was up and he ended the call before dropping my precious phone into the cover and walking away.

I turned around and saw Adrien nearing. He hadn't seen me yet so I turned back and walked towards the mansion, hoping to avoid him. I quickened my steps and tried to jog a bit. Please, don't come next to me, Adrien. Stay away. Don't see me.

Be invisible, Ashe, like you always have been. I focused straight on the mansion and tried to escape the boy.

I heard panting getting louder and I knew he was getting closer. Oh no, he was going to call me. And then I won't know what to say. Hey, Adrien, did you sleep well? Oh, did you know? I'm supposed to kill you. Only you.

Tempted to look at him, I turned around slightly and saw that Adrien was very close to me, he was jogging right next to me, actually. Tiny beads of sweat glistened on his skin. And I felt this weird need to flick it away. Little strands of blonde hair fell over his eyes and I wanted to hold that back too…and tangle those strands around my fingers…

I snapped out of my trance when I realised he didn't say anything. Just shot me a dark glance, and started jogging faster, overtaking me and completely ignoring me.

As I watched him start another round of jogging, I slowed down and eventually froze in place. That dark glance kept on replaying in my head. Those green eyes had been brighter, happier.

But now they were just bland and icy. He didn't even acknowledge me.

I touched my wrist unconsciously. He had held it tight that day, when we both ran across New York City. And my fingertips burned with the memory of wiping his arms clean from all the dirt of the sewers. The little glances we shared. All those were different from the one glance he gave me just now.

What was happening?

I finally reached the mansion to see a few of them dipping themselves in the pool. They turned around and smiled when they saw me. Kai raised his hand, "Hey, Ashe you're back! Want to join us?"

I looked at Romeo doing back strokes and Ethan lying back on the easy chair only in his trousers. Weirdly, they all had finely toned abs that I couldn't compare with anything I had seen before. It was probably the tough days in Breakfire Online that made them this way.

I tried my best just to look at their faces as they shamelessly flaunted their half-naked bodies to this weak-hearted girl.

"No thank you, Kai. I'll just sit in my room…" And watch you guys. I internally slapped myself. I was shameless. Talking to them felt easier now though, the old uncomfortable feeling was gone, now that I didn't have to be guilty of directly being the cause of their murders.

"Aww, no Ashe! We want you here!" Romeo yelled at me, floating up in the water now.

I raised my eyebrows, "Keep it in your pants, little one!" Romeo chuckled sheepishly. Ethan looked up from the book he was reading, "She'll come if she wants to, Romeo…you guys should give her some space."

I smiled wide at that. Ethan was so considerate! "Why thank you, Ethan!" I bowed and made my way into the empty house, followed by whines from Kai and Romeo. I couldn't help but laugh at those two as I poured out some orange juice into a glass.

"What were you doing outside?" A deep, unfriendly voice said.

I looked up in surprise and saw Adrien leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen, his head almost touching the top of the frame as he looked down upon me. He had changed his clothes to a simple grey t-shirt and black pants.

His voice had turned dark too. Chills whizzed on my skin. "I was just taking a morning walk," I managed to say, trying not to sound flustered by the sudden change in his attitude. I kept my eyes down, focusing on filling my glass with orange juice.

"Why are you pouring the juice so slowly?"

I clutched the carton tighter and looked up at him. "I can pour my juice however I like," I retorted and continued pouring it slowly, drop by drop. He watched me do it. After what felt like 2 hours of pouring later, I had only reached half of the glass.

He let out a frustrated sigh and strode forward towards the kitchen table. I let out a gasp as he stepped closer and wrapped his hands around my thin fingers and snatched the carton from me. He poured the whole thing for me before grabbing another glass, flipping it in his hands and pouring a glass for himself.

"I could have poured it on my own," I muttered.

He touched his glass to his lips and looked down at me again, "I couldn't wait 100 years for you to finish pouring it before I could pour one for myself."

I place my glass back on the table and looked up at him. "Why are you angry with me? What did I do to you?" Seriously. Why was he suddenly acting all cold towards me?

In the distance, I heard doors swing open, but I didn't look back, just stared at this boy's dark unloving green eyes for an answer.

He shrugged and shook his head before looking the other way. "You're talking nonsense."

The kitchen door swung open to reveal Kai standing with only a bathrobe protecting my innocence. "Don't walk around the house like that! I'm a girl, remember?"

Kai's lips curved into a mischievous smile. He tilted his head at me, "I know, baby."

I gasped, my face heating up, "Ew!"

Kai laughed before sensing the tension between Adrien and me. "What's wrong Ashe?"

"I don't know, you ask him. He is acting all cold and boring today. Like he wants to kill me. And I didn't even do anything!" I told Kai as loudly as possible so that Adrien would know I was talking to him too.

Kai did something I didn't expect. Instead of asking more about the problem, he just laughed. "He is like that towards us also. That's his personality, Ashe, I thought you knew."

"What?"

I turned to look at Adrien, he had turned his back on me now and headed upstairs to his room. My orange juice swayed in the glass as I tried to realise what I just did.

I had thought switching off survival mode would make everybody nicer. It had, but along with that, it brought out the opposite sides of themselves. The other five were reckless before. Now they were the kindest boys in the universe. Adrien was a sweet, caring and big-hearted boy before.

Now he was an ice-cold king.