Upbeats

  Chapter Nineteen

  This mission was getting graver by the second. What started out as just a simple scouting mission to see if our local friendly dentist was an alien, turned out not only to be entirely worth it and a bit nuts but it also turned the tables.

  I thought with that bit of knowledge, we would know what to do next and maybe succeed.

  I didn’t stop for a moment to realize that maybe once we found the clues it would lead to something even bigger and more questions than answers.

  We spent the last waking hours of Saturday in Brooke’s room. Smithy had a throbbing headache but he still joined in helping us figure out what to do.

  Just as the sun began to sink below the horizon, something occurred to me.

  I clicked my fingers, shattering the silence, making everyone jump. "System, that map of Rockwell, in Gemini’s apartment, do you remember what page it was open on?"

  System shut his eyes, as if the answer was printed on his eyelids. "Um . . . an area called ‘Downtown.’"

  "Did Brooke or Ned see it?"

  "I did," Ned answered.

  "Did you see a circle around anything in particular?" I was getting excited now.

  "Yeah . . . you know those old warehouses, near the Dump, the ones they rent out to companies or people for storage? There was a red circle drawn around the vicinity. I wonder if . . ."

  "Gemini could easily have rented a warehouse," Smithy said, hazily. "It’s out of the way and phone signals are terrible there."

  "Why would that be a good thing?" Robyn asked.

  Smithy shrugged but it turned into a cringe halfway. He wasn’t a hundred percent yet. "Where our phones don’t work, because we’re far from towers and so forth, non-Earth transmitters work best because there’s less interference."

  "How do you know that?" Brooke cocked an eyebrow.

  "System told me," Smithy replied, simply.

  "Oh."

  "Well, then we know where, when, what, why and who," I said. "But we just don’t know how. How are we going to get into that warehouse? How are we going to stop that transmission?"

  "It’s impossible to terminate the transmission," System said. "Not with your primitive Earth technology, anyway."

  I thought that was an insult for a moment.

  "Okay," I said, slowly, as if an idea would occur to me in the time it took to say it. "So we can’t put an end to the actual transmission . . . but what if we can butt in somehow?"

  "Butt in?" Ned repeated, like he hadn’t heard right. "Why would we want to do that? I’m too young to be writing out a will."

  "It won’t come to that, I promise," I said it with all my heart, just to reassure my team and myself.

  "How would we do that, though?" Robyn said. "It’s one thing to try and end the call from a safe distance with some technical equipment but it’s another thing to go storming in there. What do you have in mind, Luke?"

  I took a deep breath. No one was going to like this suggestion . . . "If we can get in there and somehow convince the Monmia to back off . . ."

  "Monmia never back off," System said. "They have never done it and they never will. Even if Gemini called them up and said that the hole in the O-Zone was only as big as his thumb and that it would not work, sorry, the Monmia would just keep dropping bombs till they found the hole or made the hole."

  "Then . . . couldn’t we just tell them that the hole is . . . somewhere else?" Brooke said. "Tell them the hole is somewhere above the ocean, at a spot where it’s actually strongest. Wouldn’t that work? I mean, the bombs will drop and won’t be able to break."

  "You. Are. BRILLIANT!" I cried, two hairs from hugging Brooke. If I did that, though, I was likely to be beaten black and blue. "Could it work, System?"

  System rubbed his little chin as he considered it.

  "It just may . . . but we would have to tell them to use all their bombs and leave nothing behind. Once they find out that they’ve been tricked, they’ll return with more resources. Unless . . ." he trailed off.

  "Unless what?" I prompted.

  "Well . . . the Intergalactic Police really should be guarding Earth. They’ve been doing so for millenniums. Why do you think you haven’t been invaded yet? If they aren’t, then either Gemini has managed to take down entire squadrons, or he’s cloaking his transmissions with something new, something the police haven’t gotten a hold of yet—"

  "Then how did you manage to detect Gemini’s transmissions?" I interrupted.

  System shrugged. "I create transmission detectors as a hobby. I can detect any signal, frequency or transmission known to Systematics. And we know a lot."

  "Oh, okay."

  "It is possible, too, that he sent them on a wild goose chase to get them away from Earth. Gemini wouldn’t consider leaving anything to chance; he would have gone to the highest precautionary measures thinkable."

  "So, the Intergalactic Police are no help," I sighed and sat back in the chair. "And it’s a bunch of high school kids up against a superior race of ruthless aliens. Terrific."

  "I wouldn’t say ‘superior,’" System muttered.

  Robyn was fiddling with her locket, as usual.

  Smithy was still rubbing his head.

  Ned sat on the edge of Brooke’s bed with crossed arms, a frown set on his face, he was deep in thought.

  System was tinkering with something that looked like a TV remote.

  And Brooke looked like she was on the verge of saying something.

  "We have to get to that warehouse," I said, as if to remind everyone what our main objective was.

  Robyn looked sideways at Brooke. To this day, I don’t know if Robyn used her mind messaging service or if it’s some kind of girl thing, but they were thinking the same thing.

  Robyn looked Smithy up and down. "You know, you do look an awful lot like Gemini . . . the human part, I mean. Maybe we can’t completely destroy the transmission or fuzz out the signal. But we could, shall I say, assist in the transmission . . .?"

  Smithy groaned. "I’m gonna hate this, aren’t I?"

  Brooke nodded, enthusiastically. "I have always wanted to try out my make-up skills on a live subject," she said with an evil grin.

  Smithy looked terribly nervous all of a sudden.