Chapter 35: Preparations
It took the boys more than an hour to get all the information we needed, but when Hanz said it was complete, things were really complete.
"Here," he said, placing pages of papers on the table in front of me. "Neil and I managed to find a printer. How are you girls doing?"
Audra and I barely glanced at each other while I quickly snatched the papers. If I had looked at her, I was sure she would be poker faced. But I wasn't so lucky. I would had been beet red.
"How dare you flirt while we work our asses off?" Neil said, figuring us out nonetheless. "Shame on you lesbians! Shame!"
Hanz, smirking at us, sat in front of the coffee table. "Let's read the information we've printed together," he said. "I'm sure everyone is dying for that."
I flipped through the pages I snatched a bit earlier. "Okay. . ." I trailed. "All of these are about Blackwell?"
"Yup." Neil took a seat on the floor as well. "Fire away, Leighton."
"Hmm. . . Steven Blackwell," I murmured. "Fifty years of age. Proponent of the Lesbian and Gay Gene, also known as XQ21." My mouth turned downward. Scanning the pages, most of the information printed there were things we would often hear on TV anyway. Nothing new.
Hanz sighed. "In addition to that, we searched about what was going on in the news. Nothing. It's like there's a media blackout. No one was talking about anything gay-related."
Audra's hands clenched. "How are they explaining what they did in schools then?" she asked. "In offices? The rallies? People must be asking."
"I don't know," Hanz admitted. "Or maybe they're treating it like the Middle East." His face darkened when I stared at him. "The Middle East was where they tested the cure first, remember? They said that the LGBT community agreed to it, but I doubt that now. Maybe, like the Middle East, Blackwell expects our country to just pretend we all agreed to it too."
"That's absurd!" Neil grabbed the papers from my hand. In doing so, he only took half of the layer on top. I was left with the bottom. "Aren't people going to oppose this? Anyone?"
"Maybe they did in the Middle East," I said. "And maybe like us they were silence. Or tried to be silenced. Who knows?"
"Plus," Audra said. "Humanities' future is at stake, remember? Don't forget, they're trying to cure us the first place because in the future we wouldn't have enough babies to sustain the world. Too much gay and all that crap. Don't you recall the statistics they published?"
Yes. And unfortunately too. In all this hiding and running, the grand scheme of things had been lost to me. But now that we thought about it, I could understand what Blackwell was trying to do.
For the sake of the future, he wanted to sacrifice us.
Neil, who was still scanning his half of the papers, began to read out loud. "Hobbies," he shared. "Animals. More animals. Boring crap, people. Blackwell's an animal lover. Maybe he and Hanz are both vegetarians."
"Vegan," Hanz corrected. "And let's not argue about that. You don't know what I had to eat outside Conduit, but I told Pax."
My nose wrinkled while I stared at my own papers. I couldn't imagine him doing that. "Background," I shared. "Steven Blackwell was the son of two prominent geneticist. He's also a dropout in an Ivy League school, but afterwards managed to teach at the very same school after getting his PHD overseas. Then a few years after, got fired again for trying to pioneer something he shouldn't."
"Shady," Neil said. "I wonder what kind of experiment that was?"
I flipped through another page. But it was a long list of Blackwell going from one workplace to another, having done something, perhaps, that made his bosses turn him away. "Basically, he was fired all the time," I said. "Until. . ."
Even Audra eye's were questioning. I flipped through another page and narrowed my eyes. This information was coming from another source altogether. Something close to a tabloid on the internet. So I didn't know if I'd believe it.
"Steven's radical thinking, according to a past colleague," I read, "went too far that they just couldn't take it. Blackwell was trying to play with genes too much. Even the scientific community opposed it."
"What genes were they talking about?" Hanz asked.
"It didn't say," I answered. "The information stopped there."
I glanced at the three of them. Okay, Steven Blackwell was a total nutcase. All of us knew that. But it wasn't recent. He'd been doing this for years.
What we were seeing now was the most horrible version of himself. But after getting back the recognition that he'd lost so many years ago, I highly doubt that he would simply let us go.
Or me, for that matter. I shouldn't forget that Blackwell wanted me in particular.
Audra squeezed my leg, "Don't think about those things," she said.
"Yeah, Pax. . . We'll come up with something." Hanz smiled at me. "We promise."
Even Neil nodded. And for once, I believed that.
After reviewing everything and making sure that we hadn't left a vital information unread, the four of us grabbed our bags and searched for the homeowners, who were in their shed, fixing a car.
From the looks of it, the car hadn't seen the road in years. Even so, Hanz skipped straight to the shed, examined the old thing, tapped on the hood of its blue finish. "Wow," he said.
"You like it?!" Mr. Crowley asked, too loud for my liking, though making us remember his bad ears.
"Yes!" Hanz shouted back. "Is this car a collection of yours?!"
"Yes, young man!" Mrs. Crowley joined in on the shouting match. "I gave it to this old guy in the 70's as an anniversary gift, and we'd been trying to sell it off, but no such luck!"
"Why are you trying to sell it off?" Audra, curious, stepped closer to them. And though she hadn't shouted, the old folks understood her.
"Too little money on farming," Mrs. Crowley said. "We'd hate to see the ol' girl go, but we have to so we can eat. Life is life, young one."
Audra, eyes sparkling suddenly, glanced at Hanz. "Is the watch worth as much as this car?" she whispered. "Do we still have money left?"
"Yes. . ." Hanz said reluctantly. "More, even, after we buy that."
Audra, turning back to the old folks, seemed more delighted than I'd seen her recently. At least, when it didn't come to me. "We want to buy your car," she said. "If it runs, that is?"
"Oh, boy. . ." Neil clapped a hand on his face. "Please don't let her."
"Why?" I looked from one person to another.
But Hanz was already nodding with the two of them. "This would be perfect," he said. "Through this car we can stick to the back roads. We can also borrow the Crowley's map."
The old folks, looking confused now, turned to Audra again, but she was already beaming with delight. "Okay, young miss!" Mr. Crowley shouted. "Car is yours!"
I knew now why Neil was panicking earlier. We should never had let Audra drive that car.
Riding shotgun beside her, I was treated to more or less a fast view of the off-road. On extremely fast and turbo mode.
From behind me, Hanz grabbed onto my chair. "Jesus, Audra! Slow down!"
"What?" Audra's hair was whipping from the wind. Furthermore, she stepped on the gas, which made even me, grab onto something for dear life. "You enjoying this, Pax?" She giggled. "Are you?"
I glanced at Neil in horror from the rearview mirror. He should have said something. He should have just warned us, like, "Oh, and by the way? Your girlfriend is a maniac on the road, Leighton. FYI."
I turned back to Audra. She was beaming too much. With her smile so wide like that, I couldn't help but lie. "Yes!" I hissed. "I'm enjoying it!"
Behind me, Hanz groaned, while Audra, laughing to herself, stepped on the gas more. I rolled the window down but managed not to puke.
The ride didn't last long, however, because after a great distance from the farm, Audra was slowing down near a tree. We were surrounded with them by now. She had almost made it to the middle of the forest.
"Wow!" Audra said, almost breathless from the experience. "I didn't know this old thing had so much power."
The moment she parked, Hanz opened the door, began to throw up outside. On his other side, Neil opened his own door, shakily got out of the car.
Meanwhile, I leaned my head against the seat. Audra was a legit madman.
She smirked at me. "I'm so excited to try that again."
"Please don't." But looking at her, I pasted a smile on my face. A big, big lie, yet I was happy for her. "Just kidding," I said. "We should try it again."
Audra got out. Looking at the boys, she clucked her tongue. At the same time, I got out too. My legs were mushed like jelly.
Hanz, who was just recovering, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Next time, I'm driving," he groaned. "No wonder you failed your driver's exam, Audra."
"You did?" I glanced at her. But Audra just shrugged at me. That was one other thing I didn't know about her.
But how did Hanz know that though?
"It was all over the school," Hanz explained. "If you follow gossip, that is, Pax, which I'm glad you didn't. We like you just the way you are; innocent."
"Speaking of which," Neil said, stumbling to a tree. "What are we going to do about Blackwell? And also, what are we going to do about us? Should we live in the forest from now on to hide?"
The four of us stared upward and forward, then around us where the trees were swaying slightly from the wind, bringing with it a different chill, harsher than the last few days had been.
Audra, coming to me, removed her brown jacket and slipped it over my shoulders. "There," she murmured. "And anytime you're ready, guys. We'll talk."
Having nothing else to do, the rest of us headed to the car again.
Though Audra was in front, Hanz made sure that he was now holding the key. For safekeeping.
"Okay," he said, once all of us had settled down. "Let's begin our discussion with the time limit. Blackwell said that we needed to deliver Pax to him in just about eleven days. I think that's more than enough."
"More than enough to what, exactly?" Neil wasn't looking good when I turned to him. But he rolled his eyes, which meant he was recovering like Hanz. No big deal. "We'd agreed to fight Blackwell instead of giving up Leighton, right? But how?"
We all fell silent. We didn't have an answer yet. Especially me, who should be thinking most about it. I mean, I was the one who suggested to fight in the first place, not run like we'd usually do.
"Alright. . ." Audra shifted on her seat. "How about we storm to Blackwell's office and challenge him to a duel?"
"And get killed in the process, female?" Neil shook his head. "You know better than that."
"Then what?"
"Erm. . ." Hanz piped up. "How about we lure Blackwell out of the building he wanted to meet in instead? We use Pax as bait, then we hurt him?"
"Absolutely not," Audra said in my defense. Though she didn't say anything about not hurting anyone. She simply turned to me in concern. "I can't have Pax as bait to anything. Maybe we should use Neil for that."
"Wow! And I thought you were my best friend," Neil remarked.
"Hey, you're more than capable enough."
"And I'm not?" I questioned Audra.
"Of course, you are." Audra shrugged at me. "I'm just saying that Neil won't mind getting captured. Especially by a man as dashing as Blackwell, don't you, Neil?"
"Eew!"
Audra snorted at his best friend while Hanz tried to massage his temple. Hanz and I had never heard the two friends joke at each other before. I guess they were getting comfortable with us.
But as much as I wanted to enjoy itâ Audra and Neil showing us how they were, the deadline was dominant in my mind, making me think of nothing else.
"How about. . ." I said. "How about we surprise them?"
Audra stopped chuckling. Neil stopped groaning. And Hanz dropped his hand. All of them glancing at me, listening.
"What's the most horrible thing we can do to Blackwell at this point?" I said.
"Kill him?" Hanz suggested.
"No. . ." Audra pursed her lips. "There are better ways to torture someone than killing them. What are you thinking of, baby?"
Neil looked like he wanted to react to that, but I quickly silenced him by saying, "We surprise him. . . We extract revenge on Blackwell by stealing the cure."
Hanz leaned a bit closer. "By cure, do you mean the formula they wanted to inject you guys with?"
I shook my head. "I meant the antidote to that, Hanz. Blackwell's cure was a poison to gays. But he's a scientist. And you're right from before. It's you who had thought initially that he could had made a reverse. Remember? If Blackwell can turn us into heterosexuals, he could have an antidote to bring us back."
"And?"
"And by stealing a sample of that antidote, we can help other people. The greatest revenge. By surprise," I added.
All of them thought about it. Pondered. But it had barely been a few seconds when Audra was piping up. "How do we enter their hideout though? How do we do that without being killed?"
I had the answer to that. "We steal a key card or something."
The three of them groaned.
I could read what was on their minds. Stealing reverses and keycards? Entering? And possibly even breaking a property swarmed with tracers?
What we were going to do was a lot of trouble.
But sometimes trouble was all you've got.
Audra nodded to me. "Okay, Pax. We'll work on this plan."