“Hey, Jared,” Anna held me by the collar, stopping me from walking off, “I’m going over to see my family in a minute, come with me.” The way she said it made me feel like this was something completely normal. I’ve never met her family before, or go to anyone’s house for that matter.

“Are you, asking me or telling me?”

“Telling you,” she said, so blatantly. Sure, we became close friends ever since she transferred to my lab–we’ve been working together for just over a month now. But, her house? I can’t help but feel like I’m speeding here? I wondered if it was something people usually did. Maybe I overthought the matter. Assuming that was the case, I gave her my okay.

Her old house was in a suburb on the outskirts of the city. Passing through the tranquil neighbourhood made me realise just how nice a peaceful life could be. Ever since the incident with the shipment, three months of inactivity passed by. Cennet did nothing, at least in concern to what’s visible to us. My parents were safe, Anna was safe, and so was I. UGO’s board was happy, mom was happy, so I could spend all the time in the world working on whatever I wanted.

Anna parked and we got out, strolling up the walkway. To say I wasn’t anxious would be a flagrant lie. The door opened, and Anna’s splitting image answered it, despite being a brunette. Both of them released an ear-rotting shriek and hugged each other with not an ounce of restraint, jumping up and down playfully.

“So,” the brunette grinned at me, “who’s this? Introduce me!” she said, slapping Anna on the arm. Despite how similar they looked, she was a stark contrast to Anna personality wise. Anna would have to cross a mental mountain to get on the side of natural sociability and spontaneity. This person on the other hand could probably walk up to head of state and talk like she knew the guy her whole life.

“What do you mean who?” Anna chuckled, “This is Jared, numbskull!”

“This is Jared?!” She stopped smiling suddenly, her jaw dropped and she inched closer to me and grabbed my hand, “I’m so sorry! I, I didn’t know,” a tear formed, “my sister was such a perverted cougar!”

Not a second later, Anna smacked her upside the head. “Ugh, Jared, this is Marissa, my sister,” she introduced, rubbing her temple in dismay.

“Hi, I’m Jared Ugo, it’s a pleasure,” I stuck my hand forth. Marissa shook her head negatively and pushed my hand away, bringing me in for a hug instead.

“So, you’re a bigshot rich kid, huh?” she asked, and I looked at her a little puzzled. “I mean, that would explain the carload of bodyguards there,” she looked over my head.

“Oh, ah, yeah, I guess so.”

“Wow it’s even worse than I thought. So, sis is actually a perverted cougar gold-digger. Wow!” she exclaimed, earning another smack about the pate.

“Violent too,” Marissa uttered. “Anyway, come on in!” She pulled us inside. Their parents didn’t seem to be home yet. We sat around talking, though I hardly had any input. They had a lot of catching up to do. Marissa though, went quiet for some reason, and her eyes were magnetised to mine.

“Hmm, you know, Jared, you look really familiar,” she said, crawling towards me on the couch to get a closer look.

At this point I could only cackle at her shenanigans, being nervous would be ridiculous. “Oh yeah? Maybe we met before,” I teased her.

“No, I’m actually serious now. You look just like the guy on that video recently.”

“Huh?” I scratched my cheeks, my nervousness returning, “What video is that?”

“You know! The video with the robots that blew up on the ‘net. It even made it to news!”

For a girl so airheaded, she was ridiculously sharp. My face wasn’t easy to recognise because of how much the zoom pixelated the image, but my general features were there. Short, dirt-blonde hair, small frame.

“No way!” I denied it, “besides, the video didn’t get my face properl–”

Did I really just, slip up? I asked myself after realising my choice of words. Marissa’s eyeballs were ready to pop out of the sockets. She dropped her can of soda and screamed out, a shrill cry of excitement. My blunder made Anna place a palm to her face, as if to hide her own eyes from the spectacle unfolding.

“You’re the blue sword guy! Oh my gosh! I can’t believe it!” she ranted on and on, giving me an earful. It was a strange feeling, to be praised like that. It certainly wasn’t bad, but the attention wasn’t needed either. “So, can you really fly?”

I nodded, and made a little show for her with the levitation. She was amazed to say the least, but called me out after she checked the infamous video. “Hey! That isn’t it! There was a blue thing coming out your shoes in the video!”

“Those are the boosters, Rissy, and he’s not going to use that indoors, you maniac.”

Just then, my phone buzzed on the blackwood coffee table. Mom was calling me to come over and explain some things at UGO. The headgear was still going through extensive testing, especially for safety. With that, I’d decided to call it a day and leave. They showed me to the door. I unfastened the headgear strip from around its inconspicuous position my neck and put it on my head, then flew off to UGO.

I did my consulting and prepared myself for an upcoming test at school. My attendance plummeted, but mom managed to have them overlook it, given her position and my good grades. The morning of the exam jetted on and I aced that paper, at least I believed I did.

It was just after mid-day, that’s when I had an unlikely visitor on the one day I went to school in months. The PA system summoned me to the principal’s office. I creeped up to the door, and entered the wood-themed room like a stealthy assassin. What I saw made the previous months of unspoken concord flash before my eyes like dying memories. A man walked up to me and spoke, very gently, but still accenting urgency in his tone, “We have a situation,” he said, to some great anguish by the way he closed his eyes in regret and gave a slight squeeze as he rested his hand on my shoulder. That line of his wouldn’t have set fire under me if he didn’t have on that bullet-absorbent hauberk and clutched onto a sub-machine gun.

I sighed, one so draggy it painted a look of question on the TEO and principal’s eyes. “Does it, involve robots?” I asked the officer.

“Yeah,” he bent over a little, “you know what’s going on?”

“Nah, brief me on the way, will you?”

“You’re taking this unexpectedly well,” he commented.

Waiting outside the school was an armoured van. We hopped in the back and the two opposing benches were occupied by other TEO’s, and mom. My mind halted for a second, then its gears began turning again. Figures.

“Cennet?” I asked. She nodded at me.

“At twelve today, we got reports of hostage situations. Robots have seized control of three places simultaneously. One in Chef’s Square downtown. One in a Charlotte’s Park. One in the parking lot outside North Sky mall. All open places. Each of them is about ten minutes from each other. There’s around twenty-five hostages in each location, and a dozen robots each, half of which are embedded into the crowd so we can’t open fire like that.”

“And we’re here because?”

“One person at any of the three locations is fatally shot every ten minutes. The condition made by the robots was to deliver you two to the square.”

“How many died?”

“Two. The countdown has been suspended until you get there.”

They’re negotiating? The TEO? “If they’re willing to wait, get me to my lab first.” We drove there, in an atmosphere quiet enough to hear the thoughts of doubt leak from the minds of the TEOs. I’m sure in their guidebook it stated getting more civilians involved was an issue and should not ever be attempted. Their backs must’ve been against the wall. At least that’s what I thought.

I armed myself, although, should those androids simply tell me to remove any potential weapons I might have, I’d have no choice but to comply. Even so, being somewhat prepared is better than making a poor entrance. The mere fact I brought a sword to a gun battle would’ve been insanity in itself had I not the shielders to give myself some leverage.

“Can I speak to your tech support?” I asked the fellow who dropped by the principal’s office for me. He put me on to them through his earpiece.

“Hey, this is Jared, one of the people you guys picked up,” I introduced myself.

“Uh,” he said, confusedly. The ever-shifting voice of a thirteen-year-old didn’t help his puzzlement, as he was expecting to talk to TEOs only. “You, uh, you’re the kid? I’m Randy, what do you want?”

“Have you found any traces of the person behind this?”

“No, we’re still working on it.”

“Scan the frequencies, see if you see anything out of the ordinary,”

“We did, we checked everything. There are no traces leading back to anyone. The robots are operating independently.”

His words seemed like the logical thing, but it didn’t make sense to me. Why would the robots ask for mom and me, then stop the countdown just because the TEOs said they were going to get us? For the TS to actually make that decision, someone had to be there, seeing what’s going on, hearing the exchange between the criminals and the officers. For now, I left it at that, and returned the earpiece to the guy next to me.

In a few minutes, we got to the square. The entire area was closed off. Scores of onlookers, despite the danger, gathered around the police that formed a tight-knit rope around the vicinity. Media of course, was out in their full glory on ground with camera crews and in the air with helicopters hovering above. The hostages were crammed into a circle, and between them were the six androids. The other six stood on the outside, in case the hostages themselves caused a ruckus. In such plain sight, yet so untouchable.

Finally, mom and I were escorted to the centre stage, in the middle of the barren square. In front of us were the terrified hostages, gun nozzles eating at their sides. One of the TS on the outskirts walked over to us, then pointed up at an electric billboard. There was a text file opened on the computer it was running on. The letters formed a question that placed the country’s eyes on me. ‘How does one atone for murder?’ it asked, then below that question were three simple words, ‘By saving lives.’

Cennet, was someone I couldn’t figure out. Did he want revenge or not? Why encapsulate my life in these grandiose schemes? Wouldn’t it be easier, to just kill me? I asked myself, then quickly dismissed that thought–a thought that was quite reminiscent to the past me.

The same android that directed our attention to the sign, brought it back to himself once again, “We will play a game.” It said to me, the words of Cennet himself, “One TS will fly away with a hostage. Rescue that hostage in sixty seconds, or the others will be killed. This is your chance to save everyone.”

“W-wait!” I yelled out, but a TS already grabbed a gentleman from the crowd after injecting him with something to make him fall asleep. The white-silicone robot flew off, and the countdown was ticking on the billboard. I stood there in absolute shock for a few seconds, then took the headgear off my neck, to put it onto my head.

“Jared! Jared don’t do this!” Mom screamed out as I walked off, and I could only smile at her, because I was at a loss for words that would soothe her frantic heart. The moment I connected the clip on my head, I flew off, the boosters going at full throttle. I neared the airborne TS some blocks away, but it opened fire at me, making me falter to my right, grazing the walls of an apartment complex.

So that’s your game, Cennet. It flew into one of the windows, breaking through the glass with the hostage in arm. I followed along, and was met with bullets, but not before I put a wave of energy from the shielder up. The TS sprinted through the apartment, going out into the hallway and running towards the stairs. It jumped over the railing and I followed behind it like a madman, switching the shielder on and off where necessary. Down we both fell in the middle of the huge spiral. I tried aiming the Z-21, but couldn’t get a clear shot with all the twists and turns. The TS hit the floor and immediately flew off to the main entrance, smashing through the door and making a hard right.

Time was running out with this intricate game of tag we played, people’s lives hung in the balance. I had to think of something quick. Getting up close wasn’t a problem. Grav had two more boosters on each foot, powered by UGO energy nonetheless. I also had no extra weight to slow me down. The issue was grabbing the man away from the TS without getting myself killed in the process.

The TS fired its gun again, this time though, expending all his rounds after they ricocheted off my energy shield. I sped up and crashed into it, then stuck an EMP grenade deep into the nape of its neck since there wasn’t much metal or silicone blocking that part. I wrestled the man halfway off the robot, then rammed my two heels into it, finally rescuing the man from his captor. The grenade exploded, putting the TS down for a few minutes.

I put my boosters on full and flew back to the scene, but the timer was already saying zero by the time I got there. Dammit, dammit! I curled my fists in agitation and already began thinking of what I could do, but alas, with the hostages at North Sky mall and Charlotte’s Park, I couldn’t make a move. Should they choose to kill the hostages right before my eyes, there was nothing I could do. That hauntingly powerless feeling scalded me so much. However, to my surprise, all I had to do was rescue the man in time, not bring him back, “You passed,” the announcing TS said. “You now have to do the same at the mall and park. Good luck, Ban.” That name…

Suddenly, all the androids in the square flew off in separate directions, making it hard for the TEOs to pursue all. A few got shot down, but most escaped.