Chapter 3

The President reveals his true plot.

Training took place in a moderately sized  room with gray floors made of some kind of material that was soft on your feet and felt as if it was sticking to your shoes. There were all kinds of fancy pieces of exercise equipment, things I had never seen before. Part of the floor on the far left was red instead of grey, and had several white lines painted on it. There were ropes for climbing and more ropes making up a sort of web that trainees had to climb across. On one wall were heavy looking things to pick up. There appeared to be some sort of large windowed room, but it was too dark to see inside. And behind a makeshift wall of cloth there were weapons more advanced than the world had ever seen.

When we arrived at training, Annabell and I were waved over by Ben to the front of a shoulder to shoulder line in the center of the room’s open space. Thirty-six eyes followed me as I walked across the room behind Annabell. At 1:30 on the dot, the trainer barreled through the double doors. He was a short, bald man with a mean look about him. His face looked as if he were eternally about to burst out in anger. As soon as he walked in his eyes scanned the lineup and abruptly stopped on me. “Miss Alber!” he barked. I stepped forward. “I have direct orders from Mills that you are to go to his office instead of training today.” He handed me a yellow slip of paper with the room number and the President’s signature on it. “As for the rest of you,” He barked, “50 and 50! Now!”. All the others dropped to the floor immediately and started doing all kinds of odd things. Annabell gave me a troubled glance just before I left the room.

The President’s office was not what you would expect. Apparently, the President did not work at the academy full time until recently, and he did not demand anyone to give up their place in the actual office complex. President Mills’ office was large and roomy, but there were small desk-looking things all stacked up along the walls, and more stacks of books. The walls were the same drab grayish-white, but Mills had a smart-board covering the front wall and some other kind of cork board on the other wall ( only two of his walls were not occupied by desks or books). The cork board had all kinds of notes and things pinned to it. His desk was in the corner of the room, and he was sitting in it. Across from his desk were two of the smaller, more compact desks like the ones on the wall.

Mills looked up abruptly from his work when I entered. “Miss Alber, wonderful, I’ve been meaning to speak to you ever since you got here. Please, have a seat.” I sat down wordlessly. “So, how do you like it here so far?”

I shrugged. “It’s fine I guess,” I said. After a moment's hesitation I followed that up with, “ I might like it better if I hadn’t been forced to come.”

“Well Lisa, you probably wouldn’t have came if we didn’t force you.”

“Yes. Me hypothetically not wanting to do something is grounds to kidnap me.”

Mills sighed, put his feet up, and started to play with a pen on his desk. “I guess you’re right, Lisa. The leader of the free world apologizes for trying his best to save the free world.” He make a sarcastic bow-ish gesture to me. I was about to tell him that being the leader of the free world is not a free pass to be rude, nor is it a reason for me not to kick your a*s. But I was interrupted when a guard brought in a scrawny blond boy. He walked slowly and sort of ambled around with his eyes fixed on the ground. “Ah, Charlie.” Mills said. He gestured to the other desk. “Have a seat.”

Charlie sat down and the guard left. I looked at him. He was pale, and so skinny that I could see his collarbones poking through his shirt. His hair was a mess of dirty blonde curls and his eyes were a piercing bright green, the same shade as mine. “Lisa,” Mills said, “this is Charlie. Now earlier when I said that we had a secret weapon, I wasn’t really talking about you.” He paused, and rethought his last statement. “Well, I  was talking about you, but not just you. See Charlie here was the reason we even needed you. He is the reason for the briliant plan we have developed to end the war.” Mills smiled proundly.

“Brilliant?” I snorted. “Your plan sucks. It’s fudging( I am sensoring this. I did not actually say ‘fudging’) stupid. ” I chuckled. “You’ll never get anywhere near Abler with that s**t.”

“The plan you heard earlier at the meeting sucked because that was not the real plan. We are not planning a full scale attack on Alber’s lab, that would be,” Mills paused, “ for lack of better term, ‘fudging stupid’.” He turned to Charlie and then back at me. “The real plan will be revealed to those who are to carry it out. So far it is only you, but we are giving you the ability to choose your team.”

“What? No.” I said in protest. I didn’t understand yet why it had to be me, so I was pretty pissed he was forcing me to do this. It was like he missed my whole ‘I’m an a*****e who doesn’t care about anyone else’ speech earlier (Yes, I realize that that is not what I said but that is the message that my speech conveyed).

“Just listen, Alber,” Mills said calmly. “I will explain everything if you’ll let me.”

“Don’t you dare call me Alber.” I gave him my best glare.Alber was not my name, Adrenilda was not my mother. I was her clone. In fact, if he had not backed off and apologized immediately, I would have beat him up probably. But he did apologize. “So why is this kid so important?” I asked, gesturing to Charlie, after I had cooled down.

“Lisa,” Mills said, “until recently we believed that you were the only one of Alber’s personal creations. Until very very recently, two months ago to be exact, the United States had no idea where Alber’s lab was. One month ago, we made a successful mission to liberate several of Alber’s, uh, experiments, if you wil. Now most of them either can’t or won’t talk to us. But Charlie here,” He smiled again at Charlie like he were his prized possession. “He held nothing back. He told us all about her lab, how one could get in, how it was designed, the layout of the place, all about her security, etc. It is because of Charlie that we have formulated a plan to covertly break into Alber’s lab, and kill her.” Mills sat back in his chair, waiting for me to soak it all in I suppose.

“Didn’t you already break in to Alber’s lab? Why didn’t you kill her then? ” I asked. I was suspicious of Mills and of this Charlie person. “And how do you know this kid wasn’t planted here by Alber? It seems like it was pretty easy to get them out, it only took you guys a month. He’s probably leading us all into a trap. Alber most likely instructed the rest of them to keep their mouths shut so that you would trust Charlie even more.” Charlie glanced up at me through his messy bangs. It was the only sign of responsiveness he had shown throughout the whole meeting.

“Did you think that it never crossed our minds that he might be double-crossing us? Charlie has not told a lie since he got here, and we have the best lie detectors that money can buy or scientists can build. And we did already break in, but not to Alber’s lab, just the dormitories where she keeps the kids. We had every intention to kill her but what we thought was her lab was actually the dormitory. Her lab is adjacent in a whole nother building. That answer your question, Lisa?” Mills said with a hint of sass. In all honesty, I hated Mills. But I figured I had to tolerate him if I wanted to kill Alber, which I did. “Now, the reason why I called you both down here. Lisa, You are in charge of creating the team to carry out the assassination. I talked it over with the War board, and they want you to have the full ability to choose, but I would like you to choose Charlie as one of your members. I think it would be good for you to have someone else who knows Alber’s lab. Of course, it’s still your choice, but I highly advise you bring him.” Charlie and I shared a quick second of eye contact.

I guess I was kind of shocked to meet someone else who had endured what I did. I’d kind of always felt completely alone in my experiences. I felt like I was the only one that Alber tortured, the only one that she’d pretended to mother, but here was another person. Someone from the same place as me, someone created by Her, someone else in this whole entire planet who had actually met her. Someone who had real deep seeded hate for Adrenilda Alber, a hate that I thought that no one else would ever understand.  But nothing really shocked me more when I heard a thought ring through my head, clear as a bell, when I wasn’t even listening for any. “So, are you gonna pick me? “When I heard it I jumped, causing Mills to pause and look at me awkwardly. I knew it was Charlie immediately but it caught me off guard.

“I didn’t know we could do that,”I responded.

“The silence is getting kind of awkward, Lisa. You should probably say something. Say you’ll pick me. I want to come.”

“I don’t trust you” I “thought” back. It was true. “I’ll think about it, Mills.” I said to fill the weird silence.

Mills nodded. “Okay, well the rest of your teammates will be determined from the best that this academy has to offer. You will choose four others to accompany you. Your training class, the one I pulled you out of, is kind of like a tryout. But the candidates don’t know it and won’t be told unless they are chosen.” He handed me a cream colored folded piece of paper with more pieces of paper inside of it. My brain reminded me that this was called a folder (I hadn’t seen one in a long time). “These are my personal recommendations. Take it from me, these guys are your best bet.” I nodded. “Okay Lisa, you are dismissed, you’re going to room 112, got it?” I nodded again.

I won’t bore you with the details of class. Class was where Mills sent me, and from the moment I first walked in, I was utterly and completely lost. I had never had any kind of education, I knew how to read and write but that was about it. And, I was completely technologically backwards, which I learned very quickly was an issue. The Classroom was equipped with the best and most recent tech, and all of the other students had these tablet things. Because I didn’t have one, Mr.Carter provided me with the worst tablet The Academy had to offer. The first day was completely horrible, because I couldn’t answer the complicated math problems like the others, I couldn’t use the tablet to do the problems he told us to do, I couldn’t type ( The keyboard on the tablet didn’t have letters on it because apparently typing was what these kids did instead of writing, like 100% of the time. Annabell had to come over to my desk and tell me that the blue glowing grid that had appeared out of nowhere was used  for writing and then teach me how to change the settings to “Beginner (Recommended Pre-k through- Grade 1)” to make the letters show up) which was embarrassing, and I never had any idea what Mr. Carter was talking about and he refused to slow down or go back so that I could catch up . Even though most of the other Genesi had been educated, the only person who ever really excelled at Class was Ian.

I was my failure in class that drove me towards Ian.

Author's Note

The end is kind of out of place ,but I'll probably move it in the future