10.| Two Can Play At That Game

Before The Fall

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I can't sleep after the phone call from my father. He like he thought he was doing me a favor by telling me to stay inside and not to trust anyone. But his instructions are no different than the ones the president gave us.

How dare he show up now after being gone for so long? How am I supposed to tell Ivan that our father isn't missing anymore? That he is alive and called me only a few hours ago?

The sun rises, painting the sky a burnt orange and casting a fiery glow over skyscrapers in the distance. Nothing has changed since yesterday morning. Arkum city is still quiet, no helicopters or sirens since the third day.

I turn on my phone and stare at my father's message, wondering where he has been all this time. I tell myself that he is in some kind of trouble, or that he had to run because the company had him company was involved in illegal business. It isn't too hard to believe. The president did say the company was messing around with unauthorized experimentations.

I feel lost. My thoughts are spinning out of control, and I hate that I can't keep up with any of them.

The only thing that pulls me from my thoughts is the sound of a zipper.

I turn around and see Zeke crawling out of the tent, shuffling through the fresh blanket of snow on the roof, and joining me. The cold has only gotten worse since the five days we've been up here.

I rub my hands together and try to act normal. "Well good morning, sunshine."

Zeke grins at me, and I'm relieved he notice my fear. "Don't ever say that again." He points a warning finger at me, and makes a playful grumpy face.

I laugh, then change the subject. "Did you get another emergency signal on your phone?" I hope maybe my phone is fault, and that I missed some emergency texts from the government because of a bad signal.

But Zeke frowns and shakes his head. "Nope. Why why would you expect them to? The government never gave a shit about us, Ian. Just look at how our healthcare treated people that had no money."

Zeke has always been big on conspiracies. When we were in middle school, and my father started working at Biotechs, he joined other conspiracists who thought the company was shady. They even made all kinds of YouTube videos based on the interviews they had with two fired employees that wanted to expose the truth.

And the shocker is, those two employees who talked to Zeke and his group disappeared four months later. After that, his protect was shut down due to no new leads, but I see now that he still kept his hope.

"Are you still on the project CERN theory?" I ask him, watching a flock of birds fly north.

Zeke squints from the sunlight. "Yeah. It's all there. Hello, man, didn't you watch the news six months before the explosion?"

"I haven't." I shake my head. Around that time, I was too busy worrying about how Jack would pay for Ivan's medical bills. He had been sick before our father's disappearance. He only go better recently.

His brows shot up in surprise. "Oh man. You're in for a fucking blast."

Zeke runs and grabs one of his backpacks, then slings it down and starts digging through it. While I wait, he pulls out several newspaper articles and flattens them for me to read.

One of the headliners is: Biotech Breakthroughs Owner Claims He Can Control The Weather With A Machine.

Zeke starts explaining before I can read more.

"He said he could control the weather with a machine. Remember when your father started working there and it snowed in the middle of summer?" He asks me and I nod.

Zeke jabs at the paper. "This could be why. And four weeks ago, there was an earthquake that happened in Charlottesville that broke the record from 2019,"

"But some sources traded the earthquake back to your fathers old job by using sound waves in the earth. They said it could with with fault lines and everything." He move on to the next paper and I squat down see what he's showing me.

Zeke looks up quickly to check f i'm paying attention, and when he see's I am, he pulls out another news paper. "Look at this picture closely."

There's a small riot happening outside of the company. At a closer look, I can see my father in the background trying to shield his face from the camera crew, but they still managed to catch him in the picture.

The date on the paper is a day before he disappeared.

"This can't be possible." I say, practically speechless. "The CEO of the company said they hadn't seen my father for two weeks before this date."

"Still believing everything the media puts out there, Ian." Zeke shakes his head. "That means your dad might be alive."

I want to tell him that he called me, but I'm interrupted by the sound of two people fighting.

"You can't take the last five bags, Jake!" A red head boy with a scar across his forehead, shouts.

"Or what? What the fuck are you going to do about it twig?" Jake spits on the red haired boy and punches him in the stomach. He holds up a bag of sour cream and onion chips in front of his face.

"Maybe I'll eat it, then save what I shit out for you later." Jake taunts the boy as he curls up, holding his stomach.

Rose pushes him. "Stop being greedy and out the chips back. Zeke said we're going to raid the cafeteria. Nothing is stopping us now that everyone's awake."

Zeke and I walk over to them. I have a bad feeling It's the same feeling I had when Jake and I fought.

The red haired boy gets up and swings a backpack at Jake, hitting him in the face with a zipper and leaving a red welt across his face. He's pissed. He wipes the blood away, looks at his hand, and then grabs the boy by the throat with both hands.

I pull the Jake's shirt and Zeke pries his hands off the red haired boys throat.

He starts wheezing.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!?" I ask him. "The world is ending and you want to choke someone over four bags of chips when there's plenty more food in the cafeteria?"

Jake scoffs. "You think I'm going down there? I'm not."

"Oh, yeah you are." Zeke joins in.

Jake eyes us. He knows he can't win again both of us. He also knows he already lost to me once, and to lose again would make him look weak.

"I tell you what," Jake says, crossing his big arms across his chest.

"Go on." Zeke says.

"If you lose to a fight, I keep the rest of the chips and stay behind when you go scouting."

Zeke and I look at each other, then back at him.

"Fine. Let's do it." I'm ready. But he's more stupid than I thought if thinks he can beat me.

"Not you," He says. "Him."

I look, and he's pointing at Zeke.

Zeke meets Jake's eyes and says. "I accept."