(Oh dear… I never thought of that! And I've been doing both! Lol, maybe you can talk- I mean text some common sense into them.)
(Aww, the joys of torturing your characters.)
"That makes sense… we should probably-" Joanna fell quiet, as she heard a low murmur. Whether she was crazy, and it was in her own head, she had no clue. So she kept quiet as she tried to make it out. Though without knowing where it was coming from, the effort was futile. "Am I crazy, or do you hear that too?" She asked softly, her speech very spacey.
(Yeah, I've tried XD. It never works. They have no common sense. Also, I've been doing the same. I must be sick already!)
(Indeed!)
"I hear it too." Arsen tilted his head, listening intently. "I think it's coming from the next room. Do we want to listen in, or try and complete our mission?"
(Oh dear… what will we ever do?)
Glancing up at him, she was trying to think straight. He head was telling her to get back to their mission, but her gut said stay and listen. It could be important, or it could be a waste of time. "Five minutes. We stay for five minutes, and if we don't hear anything good, we leave and continue on with our mission. Sound good to you?"
(The worst. Obviously XD)
"Sure. That sounds good." Arsen moved closer to the wall, so he could listen better. He didn't recognize the voices, or, at least, not all of them. Two of them were familiar, though… Jake and Luna.
Luna was speaking. "…saw them a few days ago. They don't remember it at all! It's like a curse on them or something. The System is so cruel! How could they do things like this?"
(Lol)
Listening in, Joanna glanced over at Arsen. Clearly this was more important. She had a feeling they'd be here for awhile, and wasn't sure if she liked that idea or not.
"You're kidding!" A man's voice replied in disbelief. "I knew they would cut low, but this is taking it too far. They're practically just kids, half of us are double their age. And I hate to admit that, but it's true. Do you know why they're here?"
Arsen tilted his head. What on earth was being talked about? And who?
"I don't. The most likely thing, though, if they're acting as people they're not, is one of those stupid tasks that the System calls missions. You know, the ones to help graduate, while giving the System even more power and popularity?"
After a heavy sigh, a second man's voice was heard, through the murmur of the room. "Then we need to keep a look out. It's stupid, but no one is to go alone. Don't think of it as a 'buddy system', more like… protection. I have a feeling they'll be here tonight, and they'll coming to hunt one of us down. There's safety in numbers."
"There is. But they're both pretty powerful. Diviners are kind of common, but he's been trained since he was young, and she's a Siren. You know how rare and powerful those are." Luna sighed. "We need the strongest to watch the most important. You're probably right about them coming here tonight. We should set up an alarm for them."
The connection was too perfect to ignore. A female siren, and a male Diviner… who had both seen Luna and Jake in the past week. The two were undercover, and the others knew about their mission. There was no point trying to ignore it. There was something bigger under all of this, that neither of them knew about. "It's us… it's gotta be."
"I know, I know… we do need to figure out something. I'm not an idiot. I'm just thinking… what much can we do. If they're not even here tonight, we're freaking out for nothing. But we need to take this serious enough so that we can not get murdered by one of the two. We can't risk loosing one of our members." The same man's voice insisted, sounding rather frustrated.
"I think you might be right," Arsen said grimly, turning to look at her. "Something doesn't seem right here. They guessed right away what we were up to. I don't know if we'll be able to follow through with our job if they are on the lookout for us."
Another woman spoke up. "It's frustrating. If only the Clint girl was here. She would be able to help up see what was going on."
"The Weaver, right?" Luna asked.
"Yes."
"But remember, she did tell us to watch out tonight, said that we could either be all eliminated, or have a blessing come true." This was Jake. "If she wasn't Clint's sister, I might think her visions were a bunch of baloney. She's fifteen."
Joanna knew he was right. They couldn't… but they had to. "We can't not go through with it. But, there's not much we can do now. We're trapped." She whispered, trying to listen and talk at the same time.
"She's proved quite powerful though… and normally pretty correct. Don't you remember the Davis situation?" A softer toned woman asked, in more of a hypothetical way. "That's how we lost the two. The system sent Davis, and he got in with us. His sister tried to warn us, and we didn't believe her about Davis."
"I know." Arsen rested his head against the wall. "It's too bad neither of us can turn invisible. That would be so helpful." He rested his hand on the wall. "Maybe we could try and follow him? Later? And get him after the gala?"
"I do remember that. Caroline still hasn't awoken from her coma." This was a rough-sounding man. "What do we do, then? We know that they're already with the System, and I don't think we have any Runners (mind readers/controllers) anymore, now that Caroline isn't awake."
"We could try and invite them over again," Luna said, voice trembling. "And try and tell them the truth."
"And if you leak too much, and it doesn't work?"
It sounded like Luna was barely keeping herself together. "I just miss my brother."
"Maybe we-" The last comment cut her off, and she felt her face go pale. Her stomach turned, and felt sick at her words. Joanna had no idea why she felt so sick, but that had completely raddled her. "B-brother? What… what are they talking about?" Joanna asked weakly, supporting herself on the wall.
The room was silent for a couple seconds, before a soft shuffling followed by foot steps. "I know honey…" Jake told her in a softer tone. "It sucks, but we can't risk anything. What would we do, if they found us out? They could use us, he could hurt you. I know he's your brother, but he's also incredibly dangerous."
"Exactly, Luna. Even if Arsen doesn't, she might hurt you. That's not a risk I'm willing to take."
"I-" Arsen's face was pale, deadly pale. He could feel something in him trying to get out, to escape, to make itself known, but he didn't know what. "I don't-"
"He would never hurt me!" Luna seemed to gather herself. She sounded furious. "You never knew him the way I did. He would never hurt anyone if he could help it."
Joanna pushed away from the wall, unable to force herself to listen anymore. Yet, she was finding it difficult to stand up straight. So she never went very far, just not up close. "I-I don't understand…" She said weakly.
"Luna, you need to listen to logic. We're not in a fairy tale." A serious tone snapped, though sounded like it had taken much force to do so. "Just because he wouldn't have in the past, doesn't mean he won't know. The System has jacked up their memories so bad, and turned them in to such experiments, they're barely what they used to be. We've only got one shot at this."
"He's right, Luna. Please just listen." Jake pleaded with her softly.
Arsen wanted to help her, he really did, but he couldn't seem to move. He was trying, trying to figure out what was happening and what was being spoken about. He couldn't wrap his head around what was being said.
"But then what do we do?" Luna asked, sounding angry, and hard, as if she was crying. "I want my brother. I want my best friend. I hate the System, and I just want everything to go back to normal!" She sounded weary, as if she had been fighting for a long, long time.
It was quiet once again, and no one moved. You could probably cut the tension with a knife, if you had one.
"…I say we take the chance. What else can we do? Their going to come, and we don't have many other options." A soft voice piped up, seeming to be on Luna's side. "And if it doesn't work, we can try to keep them there until it does work. Until we find a way to get them to remember.
"We could see if we can find anyone who can wake Caroline up," the rough voice said once again. "And maybe it would work? Or we could see if one of us can read her notes, and understand it."
"Is it a good idea to try and mess with that? We could screw them up worse than they already are. We also don't have any 'test subjects' to test it out." The soft voice insisted, sighing weakly. "Maybe we should try waking her up first."
"Agreed- I don't want to be the one to make things worse. Though I still don't agree with this." The stern man insisted, as he stood up and soft foot steps were heard. "For now, we need to make sure they're not here. If some of you don't mind staying here with me, Luna, and Jake, that would be appreciated. Though we need more of you out there."
"Okay." Luna sounded tired.
There was silence. Arsen stared at Joanna, his face pale. "What-" he shook his head. "What is going on?"
Joanna gave up trying to keep away, and just fell back into the wall with a weak sigh. "I-I don't know…" She admitted, holding a hand to her forehead. "But I'm shaking… really, really bad." Joanna whispered, still swaying a bit, even with the support of the wall. "I don't… I don't know what that was- but it can't be real. It just… can't be."
“They must know that we’re here. And they decided to, instead of letting us know, tease us.” Arsen shook his head. He wanted to go and help her, but he was too shaky to do anything.
So badly she wanted to agree, but the way the room went all hazy… and started to blur into her own thoughts… stories she hadn't seen before coming up front. Joanna really couldn't agree or disagree with his statement at the current moment. Her body went numb, and she slowly slid down the wall as she slipped into a state of unconsciousness.
(Would we want to write the memories, just to have some ~fun~ getting to write their previous story? Or would we want to just have everything come back?)
(I think we should write some memories, like maybe some really prominent ones?)
