Upbeats 2: Crime After Crime

  Chapter Sixteen

  I could have stretched myself around the entire mall, poked my head around corners and see if I could find Luke.

  Instead, I did the simple old-fashioned "track them using the tracking device on your watch equipped with alien technology and walk to them" trick.

  (No one would ever see it coming...)

  Luke's watch was telling me he was near the west entrance. No one noticed me, so I snuck down the escalator and just walked straight past the gunmen who were still trying to tackle Ned to the ground, past the hostages and on towards the entrance.

  I did not run: there was no point in hurrying. Ned was doing his job of distracting the gunmen, Smithy was teleporting the hostages out and I was pretty sure Luke was getting on well enough with his mission of tying up the gunmen at the doors.

  I strolled past the empty shops, inspecting their displays, until I reached the west entrance.

  I had been quite calm up until then, but the feeling ebbed away when I saw my fearless leader, unconscious and propped up against the wall, his hands tied in front of him and his ankles bound with the very rope he had purchased.

  System, in his natural skunk form, was tied up, too, but he wasn't unconscious. He had been tossed onto Luke's lap, carelessly. When he saw me coming, he started squirming, trying to get back on his feet.

  I dropped to my knees and started untying System, furiously.

  But he kept trying to pull away. "Hold still," I hissed at him. I undid the knot of rope around his little mouth so he could tell me what he wanted.

  "Behind you!" he shouted.

  I spun around, on my hands and knees, and looked up, only to see the ugliest, biggest, roughest, most real-life gunman I had ever seen in my life!

  (Okay, to be fair, I didn't know if he was ugly: he had a balaclava covering his face: but he was BIG!)

  And he had a gun pointing straight at me...

  "Um, hi," I said.

  He let go of the safety.

  It seemed as if everything just rolled downhill from there. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the mayhem unfold.

  Smithy stopped teleporting hostages out and collapsed from sheer exhaustion. A few hostages bent down next to him, trying to revive him.

  Ned was failing in his attempt to distract the three gunmen.

  Instead of getting ticked off, they started coming up with more effective ways to get rid of him.

  Somehow, one of them got hold of knockout gas and sprayed it in Ned's face.

  Ned, as soon as the mist hit his flesh, coughed and waved a hand in front of his face, blinking his eyes like crazy.

  "Ha!" he said, courageously. "Your knock-out gas is no match for—"

  He may have been invincible, but the knock-out gas still did its job: he staggered, swayed and fell to the ground with a lack of grace. He crashed like a sack of potatoes.

  (My hero.)

  I looked up and saw Robyn leaning over the railing on the second storey. Her eyes were so wide; they looked like something out of a cartoon.

  I thought out loud to my friend. I told Robyn only.

  she asked.

  I leaned a little closer, hovering over the heads of the unsuspecting bystanders.

  Gemini; roughly six foot four, black hair, grey eyes, pale skin, a scary resemblance to Smithy and the left side of his face encased in metal. He seemed to be confused: he didn't understand why all the people were congregating around him and his armed henchmen.

  "I have nothing to argue with you people, please leave," he asked, forcefully.

  "Go on, give us a show!" some idiot yelled.

  Gemini looked even more confused. "A show? You believe this to be a show? Oh, I'll give you a show..."

  His henchmen took their positions around their boss and aimed their technologically advanced weapons at the audience.

  You'd think they would have gotten the drift by then. But, no. They started clapping and whistling, enjoying the performance.

  "Ugh, these people need a few more brain cells to rub together," I muttered to myself.

  The applause further frustrated Gemini.

  she replied.

  Robyn giggled in my mind. She could get rather cheeky when she wanted to.

  I scanned the crowds, searching for the rest of our team. In amongst the large throng of mothers, fathers, kids and random couples, I saw the boys, with their beanies and masks already on, running through the crowd; dodging people and apologizing to all those they didn't dodge.

  It wasn't hard to tell they had just gotten off the Terminator: they were swaying back and forth, violently, as they weaved through the assembly of people.

  I told Robyn.

  In a matter of seconds, the boys reached us.

  They doubled over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. I stretched down and joined my team.

  I couldn't help but smile. "I'm guessing you guys had fun," I said.

  "That. Was. FANTASTIC!" Kevin cried, in between gasps of breath, drawing a bit of attention.

  "He enjoyed it," Luke translated. "Says it reminded him of the public transport on the Systematic Home World."

  "What kind of planet allows transport that encourages nausea?" I asked.

  "Well, I know one place I never want to get a bus pass," Ned mumbled.

  "Okay, down to business," Luke said. "What's going on?"

  "Gemini's here—" I began.

  "We know," Luke cut in.

  "His henchmen are with him—"

  "We know," Luke interrupted, again.

  "They're ready to shoot at anyone that annoys their chief..." I trailed off, waiting for the interruption that didn't come.

  "We didn't know that," Luke admitted, standing up straight.

  "What do you think we should do?" Robyn asked.

  Luke chewed his lip, thinking. "I don't want to put anyone at risk and I don't want to hurt Gemini's henchmen: for all we know they could just be innocent people."

  "So, what are we going to do?" I asked.

  Luke looked around the fairgrounds with that look in his eyes that said he was thinking at a million miles a second. It didn't take too long for his eyes to rest on the fairgrounds' locker rooms.

  "I have a crazy idea..."

  "Famous last words," Ned muttered.

  Luke glared at him. "Can you at least try and imagine something working out for the best?"

  Ned thought about it for a moment. "No, not really. Murphy, ever heard of him? Yeah, he's got this law and it is out to get me. Don't ask me why: I don't know what I did to him—"

  "Never mind," Luke interrupted before his friend could carry on. "Right now, though, I just have one question: has anyone here ever wanted to be a street performer?"