The Crimson Tales:
The Secret Society
(last updated: 05:15:10)
Part 3
Rescue
Chapter .20
Another Dream
Another Dream
"Last night I had another dream," Margo said at the kitchen table. Her face was grave and pale. Klaus placed a hand on his sisters.
"Was it bad?" he asked.
"Yes," Margo said. "I had a dream of Winnie and Phineus."
Klaus gasped, Indigo scooted her chair in closer to the table.
"Phineus is innocent." Margo continued.
"He is?" Klaus gasped.
"Yes," Margo said. "And I know what Debob is up to and what he's doing to the children. It's dreadful."
"Please do tell us, sister," Klaus said. Margo first told them about Phineus's tragic story and then told them everything that about what Winnie had read in the Book of the Unknown.
"Aha!" Klaus held up a finger. "So that's what Debob is up to! He going to open the portal to the other world!"
"But why the heck does Debob need so many Golden Waves," Indigo said. "The Book of the Unknown said that you only need one soul to open the portal. And if Debob is killing children in the thousands--"
"Oh no!" Klaus and Margo gasped. "Debob is going to destroy the whole world with all the souls!"
"That's what he's up to," Indigo said, still no expression. "Debob's going to destroy the Earth and lead us all to the new world, and rule us all, hypothetically speaking."
meanwhile....
"Ugh!" Winnie paced around her large bedroom, which Debob had requested for her. "First this was a mission to save all the orphans, but now this has turned into a mission to save the world!"
"It's my entire fault," Phineus sulked from the corner of Winnie's bedroom.
"No!" Winnie snapped. "It's you fathers! Octave is a mad man, like you had said."
“You're right I suppose" he sighed. "So how are we going to do this?"
"Well, first we must find Vikki," Winnie said.
"Who's Vikki again?"he asked.
"My friend," Winnie said and the continued. "Then after we find Vikki we pull the fire alarm, lead all the orphans out of the building and then blow up Tranaad!"
"And how do we blow up Tranaad?" Phineus questioned. "We don't have any explosives."
"I don't know yet," Winnie said. "But we'll find out soon."
Chapter .21
Preparation
Preparation
"We have to do something!" Margo said frustrated, banging her fist on the kitchen table.
"Where is Callum?" Klaus asked to no one in particular.
Indigo just sat at the table wondering why all of a sudden Callum showed up in her life. Apparently she didn't really care if the whole world was going to blow up...Callum. Callum. Callum...If Callum knew there were two copies of the book of the unknown, then he should have a copy of the book if it’s so important or at least know where it is, since he likes to always have the inside info on everything. But he says he doesn't know anything about those books. However, whenever Callum says something, you have to be sure he isn't lying. Suddenly Indigo remembered that Callum was a fake name that her older brother favored, his real name is...Indigo can't remember. How could she have forgot that? What else had she forgot?
"Margo, do you remember anything about your parents?" Callum asked as he sat down at the table.
Margo looked up startled. "No, No. Why?"
"Oh, just wondering." Callum said lightly.
"Wait, do you know anything about them?" Klaus demanded.
Callum's face suddenly became masked and then relaxed. "Nope." He said cheerfully.
Meanwhile...
During the middle of the night, Winnie woke up to a thump.
"Damn, I'll have to work on my landings." A voice strangely familiar said to himself. He was illuminated by the moonlight that poured from a window in Winnie's bedroom.
Phineus had been sleeping by the light switch and immediately turned it on. Several things happened at once...
Winnie screamed.
The intruder suddenly pointed an accusing finger at Phineus upon instantly recognizing him and said, "YOU!!!"
Phineus tried to escape the room but the bedroom door was locked as he frantically looked around the room for an escape route.
Winnie looked toward the intruder and exclaimed, "Crow?!"
"Shhh." said Crow, "we have to keep it quiet or else someone will know I'm here."
"What are you doing here?" Winnie whispered.
"Well, Indigo and I had split up to find out what's going on with the whole Octavius thing and meet up at a certain location, I waited and waited, but she never came. I couldn't track her so I decided to follow up on a lead that you were in the Artic Circle and here I am."
"Basically, she ditched you." Winnie stated.
"No."
Winnie looked at him skeptically.
"Ok, ok, she ditched me." Crow admitted.
"Where were you suppose to meet at?" Winnie asked out of curiosity.
"Oh, at some active minefield near a nearby military base. It was Indigo's idea."
"A minefield?!" Winnie exclaimed.
"Yeah." Crow said as if it were a common thing to do, to meet up in a minefield. Then he suddenly turned to Phineus and punched him, knocking Phineus out cold.
"What was that for?!" Winnie exclaimed.
"He's a traitor to all orphans!" Crow declared. "He's helping DeBob Kalob for his freedom. And his name isn’t even Phineus. It’s Richard."
Crow then proceeded to tell Winnie that Dabob was harvesting orphans from all over the world to enslave them and starve them to death.
"Now we need to find a way to escape this fortress and liberate all the orphans." Crow said.
"Do you have a plan?" Winnie asked hopefully.
"Uhh, no." Crow said lamely.
"Then how did you even get here?"
"I climbed the wall freestyle. Except it's too dangerous to go back the way I came from."
Winnie got a bobby pin from her hair and walked over to the bedroom door.
"What are you doing?" Crow asked.
"Freeing the orphans," Winnie said. Phineus stood up and put his long hair behind his ear and Crow knocked him back down.
Winnie smiled to herself at Crow, clearly impressed. He was the most multifaceted resourceful eleven year old boy she ever met. She still couldn’t believe Indigo would ever ditch him.
“Are you sure?” Crow asked her. “You’re going to have to walk three miles southwards.
“Why do you have doubts about me because I’m so small?” Winnie asked Crow. “If I say I could do it, then I most definitely can, Crow.”
“But how?” Crow asked Winnie.
“By stealing one of Debob Kelob’s SnowEnginge 2000,” Winnie replied. She threw on a scarf and unlocked the door.
Winnie stuck her bobby pin in the key hole and fiddled around for a while. The lock clicked and to Winnie's lock, the door swung open.
"Now!?" Winnie asked.
"Now or never," Crow said as he grabbed three candles from the bedroom fireplace. Winnie grinned a wicked smile.
Chapter .22
Getting There
Getting There
Klaus, Margo, and Indigo all decided that it was time to leave to safe their dear friends, Winnie and Vikki and stop Debob from doing the worst.
"C'mon Callum!" The three orphans were already sitting on a dog sled outside. "Callum!?"
"I thought he'd be ready by now," Klaus said.
"Wait for it..." Indigo said. Klaus and Margo snapped their heads around as they heard a roaring nose. In the distance they saw a yellow light. It was hard to see because the snow began to fall.
"What!?" Klaus asked. As the figure came closer they noticed it was Callum, on what looked like a snow mobile, except much faster.
"Woah!" Margo said, as Callum pulled up next to them.
"You guys aren't going to get anywhere on the dinky sled," Callum smiled. "So I got this. An SnowEngine 2000. The latest.
Klaus, Margo and Indigo climbed aboard and they took off on the super fast SnowEngine 2000.
A Few Minutes Later...
"You guys hear that!?" Crow gasped. "The sound of children. Orphaned children!"
The hall they walked down was all white. And as the kept on walking the began to pass large metal doors with number on it.
"Wait!" Winnie stopped. "There are children behind these doors!"
Without another word Winnie got out her bobby pins and began to unlock a metal door. When the lock clicked, she opened the door with great effort. She walked inside the brightly white room, Phineus and Crow following close behind her.
Six skinny looking boys who each sat on their beds looked up and gasped.
"Look!" one boy said. "Other orphans! Why are you guys not dressed in the same uniforms as us?"
"No time to waste!" Winnie snapped. "We're plotting an escape."
"Escape!?" The second boy cried. A sense of hope in his flickered in his grey eyes. Winnie nodded.
"What's your plan?" a third boy asked. Winnie ignored that question.
"C'mon boys!" Crow snapped. "No time to waste! Follow us."
Winnie ended up unlocking all the rooms in that one building, still no sign of Vikki.
"I still can't find her," Winnie started to get frustrated.
"That's because she may be in the other building," Crow said. "There are two buildings..."
"This is hopeless!" Winnie threw her arms up in the air. Winnie looked behind her. At least two hundred kids were looked at her. How is she supposed to hide all these kids and also sneak into the second building. She then looked around and saw a row of elevators down the hall.
"Crow," Winnie ordered. "I need you to lead all the orphans down stair and outside the building."
Crow looked at the orphans. They wear all wearing thin white clothing, and it was snowing outside. The orphans would freeze to death. And he had no idea which way was outside.
"Figure it out!" Winnie snapped as if she had read his mind.
“I’m going to the other building,” Winnie cried out. “To save the other orphans!”
Chapter .23
A Few Hours Later
A Few Hours Later
"Were are the guards?" Klaus asked as they finally reached Tranaad. The building look completely deserted.
"They must be sleeping in late or something," Indigo said.
Callum got off the snow mobile.
"I've been thinking," Callum turned around to face the orphans. "This good guy thing isn't working for me anymore. I just can't turn my back on my family."
Klaus and Margo looked horror struck.
"Callum!?" Indigo gasped. Klaus and Margo felt chills travel up their spine. Indigo had shown emotion. And this emotion wasn't a good one. This scared the heck out of the twins. This was gonna be bad.
Chapter .24
What?
What?
Callum shrugged. “Sorry guys.”
“Sorry? Sorry for what?” Margo said. Her eyeballs looked like they were about to explode out of her head.
“The thing is, my name isn’t Callum,” he said.
Indigo stared at her brother. “Don’t do this. Not now. You can’t just betray us.”
“My real name is Phineaus. I’m the Phineaus that Octavius adopted. I was the one who drowned Rose,” he stately plainly.
The orphans were absolutely mute and speechless at this point. How many surprises could they come upon in a life time?
“But… But… my visions said…” Margo said as she attempted to blurt out words from her mute mouth.
“Hallucinogenic drugs. I added a small amount to your salad this afternoon from predicting this. Found some in the kitchen cabinet. Apparently the Montgomery’s have been slipping some bits of it into your vegetarian meals these last few days. And I figured they were used to alter your ‘visions’” he answered nonchalantly.
“Oh and you should probably go see therapist about those ‘visions’. You might be diagnosed with schizophrenia,” he added.
“But why’d you decide to help us anyway in the beginning anyway?” Klaus asked him.
Phineus shrugged. “I don’t know really. I thought it would be fun to be the ‘good guy’ for once.”
“What exactly do you mean? That you get to change whoever you want to be whenever, just because ‘you want to’?”
“Sure. If you want to put it that way,” he answered.
Indigo was still not over her shock that her own brother had double crossed her. “Why? Why would you want to join them? They’re trying to take over the whole world!”
Phineus eyed her. “And since when have you cared? God, Indigo have you forgotten everything I’ve taught you?”
“But this… this is different. They’re going to destroy the whole world,” she said exasperated. “Why don’t you see this? I feel like I’m talking crazy.”
“You really believe the silly story Margo made up under the influence of drugs?” he asked his sister.
“It's not accurate?” Klaus asked Phineus.
“Of course it isn't. I mean come on. First of all, the whole second dimension thing is ridiculous. And us killing all of the children of the world for their brain waves, is even MORE ridiculous. It would be more easier to control the world that way, if it were true, but hello, children having ‘golden waves’ that can open to another dimension doesn’t make any sense And that sounds like something that came out of a made for TV movie (he then commented again on how Margo needed to see a therapist). You’d have to have a brain of an ant to believe that,” he concluded.
The children were too shocked to even become offended.
“And how in the world are you even related to The Secret Service?” Klaus asked.
“Well,” Phineus said tired of the children’s questions, “Me and Indigo are both the spawn of Debob Kelob.”
“What?” all three said with their mouth’s opened.
“But, I thought our family was viciously murdered by Debob Kelob’s henchmen!” Indigo was now showing the emotion of a menopausal forty year old woman. It was rather odd because Indigo was never quite the person to show such anger. It was for the first time Margo and Klaus realized that she really truly was carbon based.
“Well, I lied okay?” he said rolling his eyes. “I needed you to harden up. You were too cheery for me.”
“That’s an excuse!” his sister screamed.
Callum hesitated for a moment and sighed.
“Fine. To tell you the truth, father, Debob Kelob was having an affair with our mother his royal translator for the North Koreans. Anyways, he couldn’t divorce his wife because he was worried that people in his country would start some kind of bizarre revolution about government corruption and etcetera. So mother raised me until I was of age eight, and then she died the second after you were born. Apparently, Kelob’s wife found out about the affair and she ordered the death of our mother. She died on the run in America, me being the only witness as the female assassin shot her in the head in the head. Mother’s last dying words to me were to never trust anybody.”
“And I’ve learned to live that very phrase,” he said.
Klaus glared at Phineus. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that you must lie yourself.”
Phineus nodded. “Touché. But when it comes to business which also involves family, one most do the impossible.”
“And what is this business anyways? That supposedly involves orphans being forced to do hard labor and get killed?” Margo asked.
“Are you children that oblivious? Have you not realized that you are standing in Russian ground? Have you not learned in all those US History books Octavius had lying around so much that really, truly he was planning on make the whole world communist? And that you children were basically his slaves for collectivism for under his rule?” Callum asked them.
But of course Margo and Indigo were way too busy doing whatever they were doing to even pay attention to the large amount of US History books. And Klaus was of course jailed away in a closet. Vikki, being the book worm of all the orphans was the one who diligently studied the knowledge in these books.
“Communist? Collectivism?” Margo and Klaus asked, obviously never even heard of the two new words. Vicki and Indigo were usually to understand this complicated language. They were after all just eleven years old.
“Dimwits. Communism is when everyone gets paid the same wage and collectivism is when everything you make is taken away from you to give to other countries for the sake of money,” Indigo said.
Politics was always a big thing for Indigo.
“Right. And how is this bad?” Margo asked her.
“Well it’s bad because they give everything that YOU MADE and trade it to other countries to give THEMSELVES the profit,” Indigo answered. “And they don’t care about you that much so if you starve or die, they just throw you down some ditch.”
Indigo turned to her brother now. “But why orphans?”
“Well, after that whole thing with the Russians enslaving their poorer neighbors and the US basically going on war with them because of this, father decided they would make a more secretive program. They needed the type of person who was used to living in harsh environments and didn’t need so much food to live off of.”
The children opened their mouths in horror. “Orphans.”
“Yup. All they had to do is purchase them from some orphanage and stupid people like Mr. Bo will gladly give them to you,” he answered. “And nobody would know. All they would know was that Russia was suddenly having an enormous amount exporting goods and that people in Russia really care about orphans. Besides, orphans don’t have any families anyways so it really is of no worry and are basically the excessive population of the human race. Debob and Octavius saw it as a way to get rid of the ‘extra’ population.”
“Is there anything else about TSS before you take us and throw us into a hard manual labor camp?” Klaus asked.
Callum shook his head and smiled.
They stood there in the snow in silence.
“But Russia doesn’t have anything to offer, brother. I mean just look around. We’re covered in snow and frigid temperatures, while in other countries they have plants and gardens and everything else that Russia doesn’t have,” Indigo says. “So what really is the point to enslave all orphans?”
“Yes, but scientists say that in a few short years the weather in Russia will change from freezing cold to California sunny warm due to global warming. The younger children are enslaved to do that stuff, and are forced to work in greenhouses. But the moment they turn fifteen is the moment we give them coal mining. Debob has been planning this for years.”
“And you don’t feel bad about this at all?” Margo asked him.
She sensed a feeling of conscience in Phineus for a moment. But he shook his head and smiled like it was the last thing in the world he would feel bad for.
He then took out some handcuffs from a jacket pocket. “Now if you excuse me. I have to get these on you all.”
They all struggled from his grasp but the imprisonment was inevitable.
He pushed the three children into the SnowEnginge 2000. “Sorry kids.”
His sister shook her head. “Why?”
Phineus shook his sister’s head. “Poor Indigo. Remember from now on forth, what I tell you. Never trust anyone. Never give anyone that permission. Because one day, they’ll poison you.”
He turned on the snowmobile and headed over to his father’s palace, three miles north way.
Chapter .25
What next?
Vikki was certainly not that type of girl that would organize an army of eleven year olds. She didn’t even have the charisma to bring together the CRO back then in Octavius’s house. So how in the world would she bring all the small eleven year old girls from her dormitory¬—who were now increasingly getting smaller and bonier— to even cooperate with her against the evils of Debob Kelob?
She had overheard the conversation Phineus, Indigo, Klaus and Margo had. Indigo had given her one of the super sensitive hearing devices in the orphanage before and she had always kept it hidden her hair. It was after just a small clip that could hear from over a four feet wide wall. She was lucky enough to hide from the adults for a while by making Greta cover over for her.
And now all she had to do was find a way to bring down the system with a small coup d’état, she had learned about in Octavius’s US History books in the French revolution section.
The problem was, how?
“How am I going to get past the adults and arrange a meeting with all the students?” she pondered to herself as she fixed her bed.“And then how am I going to convince everyone to bring down the system?”
Everything she overheard all made sense now. The two children who were called in earlier in the day had both been the weakest in the camp and were constantly getting other children sick. Debob’s henchmen sought this as an opportunity to get rid of the source of disease (so they didn’t have to buy medicinal supplies) and to kill the innocent children.
This could be enough motivation to evoke the children to throw a coup d’état over the adults.
So what could she do?
She desperately wished Winnie was there. Winnie was the most sociable person alive. Well, if someone knew 26 languages, you’d expect them to have an extra dosage of charisma in them.
“What shall I do?” she thought to herself and wondered if all the heroines in her fantasy vampire novels ever had to deal with this situation.
Meanwhile…
Crow had gathered all of the eleven year olds together, into the lunch room because some of the orphans were too cold to be outside. Because it was still at night the adults were all sleeping in their own rooms and there were only a few night guards outside the lunch room door. Crow and some other big eleven year old boys had knocked them out successfully.
But now the place was going wild. Most of the eleven year olds whopped and screamed in excitement in the lunchroom and tore the papier-mâché that hung from the ceiling down. Crow had no idea what to do next.
“Hello? QUIET EVERYONE!”
Hundreds of thousands of mouths stopped speaking and the children faced Winnie. Their eagerness intimidated Winnie.
He looked bewildered for a moment because he was now put on the spot and muttered a few cuss words before staring at the crowd directly in the eyes.
He looked boldly yelled in the microphone with a very mature voice (as if he had reached puberty on a early age): “Everyone. Grab whatever you can bring. Food, Clothes, weapons and everything. We’re going to screw these bastards alive!”
The eleven years old chanted after him, pumping their fists in the air. “Screw these bastards alive!”
After a long period of time, the kids’ chants slowly decreased as Crow began speaking again.
“Listen. We’re going to split everyone into groups. So be quiet. We don’t really want to wake up the bastards.” he said as his monotonous boomed onto the speakers.
“Everyone over there,” he pointed at hundred or so kids crowded over at the far back corner. “You guys take care of the food. Carry as much as possible.”
They eagerly nodded and walked away to get a whole storage of food from the kitchen.
“You guys at the front table, grab whatever blankets clothes you can carry. The more the better cause we’ve got a long journey to travel before reaching temperatures above twenty degrees Celsius,” they all nodded and the leader of the group, Greta led the way to all the dormitories.
Now there was about forty kids left, looking too weak and soiled. He glanced at them, wondering what job he could bestow on them. Their arms bore the slashes of whips and they looked like they hadn’t seen the sun in ages.
“What can we do to help?” the kids asked as one of them fainted.
The blond girl slapped the boy awake quickly. He woke up tiredly.
“Uhh, what’s wrong with that dude?” Crow asked the leader of the group.
“Oh, he’s always like that,” a blond girl answered him. “Hey um, I know this sounds weird, but instead can we help assassinate all the members of the TSS, by blowing up all the building’s Debob Kalob owns? We’ve got a personal vengeance to fulfill.”
Crow was surprised to hear this, because he was wondering about how to get rid of the building. He had noticed earlier it was made of the stuff from space ships making it not so destructible. “But the material isn’t really destructible, it’s made out of titanium carbo--”
The girl interrupted him tiredly. “Yes I know, the carbons arranged in this building have been in a way to make it not so destructible, but believe me, I’ve figured out a way.”
Crow looked at her interestedly. He had never met a girl who met his match of intelligence other than Indigo.
“Scout Halverson,” she answered him, she extended her dirty hand. “Nuclear and Weapon Engineer.”
Crow shook it politely. “That information wasn’t necessary.”
The girl nodded her head. “Yes, but I knew you were dying to know.”
Although that remark sounded so snotty, Crow couldn’t help admiring the girl who had reached puberty at an earlier age, due to the fact she was towering over him (and that all her body parts were all in the right places unlike most of the girls in his age). He would have felt intimidated but, for some reason why he just had to be in awe of her.
Scout snapped her fingers and yelled out some Russian words which Crow couldn’t decipher. Apparently this girl was multi lingual. How many talents could this girl have?
She waved her at Crow and smiled, “See you later, stud.”
Stud. STUD! She called him stud. Crow felt that he was already helplessly in love with Scout Halverson.
Chapter .26
Dunkirk Beach
Vikki took a deep breath and gathered herself onto one of the tallest beds. All the eleven year old orphans stared at her eagerly.
It wasn’t easy. First she had to get Greta to help her get up all the kids in her room who were already in deep slumber, to wake them up for an important reason. And then she had to double check if there were any video cameras. There was at least one. She had to figure out a way to disconnect it quickly. Luckily she still remembered that trick Indigo taught her eons ago about out to disconnect the cameras. Thank god she didn’t fall asleep that time Indigo taught her the leisure.
Vikki tried to sound as confident as possible, “As all of us know, the Sweet Lady has been taking us children every single day for the past week.”
Her voice wavered for a moment as all the girls nodded their heads in agreement.
“So, what we need to do is stop our kind, the orphans of the world, from disappearing from the face the world,” she said as she got more bolder while more girls nodded their heads.
“Yes, these people. They are bad men. They’ll do anything they can to kill us,” she continued, “And we need to stop this.”
Bex raised her hand. “But, Vikki we’re going to die the moment we step out there. You know the temperature of Tranaad. It’s negative thirty degrees every single day.”
“Yes, yes. That’s why we need a plan. We need plans to escape this hell hole,” she said, and felt extremely dirty from saying the word ‘hell’. But ‘hell’ gave her the courage to raise her head tall all the sudden. No wonder Indigo used it all the time.
“We’re going to need ammunition and clothes and food,” she said, “And we’re going to get it from the Sweet Lady’s room.”
A small girl raised her hand. “Yes, but we don’t know how to use ammunition. And we’re locked in here remember?”
Vikki’s courage suddenly teetered to below zero. Shucks. She’d forgotten about that. These kids were just ordinary kids who weren’t use to the ridiculous lifestyle she, Indigo, Winnie and Margo had back in Octavius’s room.
Every girl in the room who had previously had a spark in their eyes of hope, now retreated back into their beds as if whatever Vikki said previously said was just an illusion.
“Wait…” Vikki said in exasperation. “We can’t just give up.”
Greta yawned. “We did. And we still are Vikki.”
“Stop it you guys,” Vikki said as she pulled up all of the girls back awake.
“We can’t give up now! You want to know why? Because we’re human beings, a race that never gives up! I mean come on! What did the British soldiers do when Germany soldiers blocked all their escapes on Dunkirk beach, France?” she asked the girls who stared at her confusedly, obviously never heard of the event that happened in World War II.
“They built land with the bottoms of boats across back to their homeland, Britain. Across the damn English Chanel!” she said, sounding like a football coach before sending out his team players to win another victory.
The girls were obviously very confused.
“So, we just can’t give up alright? We can’t! Because if we don’t take a chance we’ll never know the taste of victory! It’s better than trying and failing other than not trying and failing!” she said as she recited a quote from a wall poster from the orphanage.
This seemed to put a spark on the tiny ember of hope which was hidden deep down in every girl’s heart, making all the children in the room to gather up excitedly.
Greta leaped up. “Vikki’s right! We have to do something!”
She pumped her fist in the air. “We have to get rid of the Germans! I mean TSS!”
“Get rid of TSS!” some girls repeated after her.
The feeling in the air was very similar to the feeling the French peasants felt during the French Revolution when they found out their dictator was spending all their tax money on bun buns.
“Let us make an organization,” Vikki said. She pumped her fist in the air.
“We shall call ourselves the Crimson Red Orphans. An organization that will bring down the TSS. To the Crimson Red Orphans!”
The girls nodded in excitement.
“I shall be the president of this club and my three other friends will organize this. But for right now, we shall plan an escape!”
Everyone in the group danced wildly around the room. Vikki felt overwhelmed with extreme power. For once, everyone was listening to her. For once, people adored her.
And then she realized that Winnie was standing behind her.
“And how exactly are you planning to escape when you have obviously no plan?” Winnie asked sarcastically rolling her eyes.
“Winnie!”
Vikki embraced her long lost friend and jumped up and down. She turned to the other orphans. “Everyone, this is Winnie. Winnie this is everyone. Winnie’s one of the first members of Crimson Red Orphans, by the way. She’s an excellent person for slogans and etc.”
“By the way, how did you get through here?” Vikki asked, turning to Winnie now.
She shrugged. “Oh it was nothing really. I just tasered a few of the guards and grabbed the keys to all of the dormitories. Crow gave me this cool taser, just for incidents like this because I’m so small.”
“Winnie!” Vikki said exasperatedly as soon as she realized what danger Winnie had put her in. “You do realize that there’s security cameras all over the place?”
“Well dur,” Winnie replied. “There’s a sign on the gate that even says ‘Supervised by Security Cameras’. But it doesn’t really matter when you have this baby with you.”
She pointed to her taser gun.
“Still,” Vikki said, “What if it runs out of volts?”
“I don’t know/care really,” Winnie said whispering as she leaned into Vikki’s ear, “But I love the feeling of being a dare devil.”
Vikki shook her head. “Winnie, you don’t realize the terrible situation we’re in right now.”
Winnie shrugged. “Well so what? Come on Vic, you’re wasting my time here. Do you want to get the hell out of here or not?”
Vikki glanced at Winnie suspiciously. Winnie had just called her Vic. Just plain Vic. And what was up with the dare devil attitude?
“Winnie. Stop you need to know. Debob Kelob is enslaving orphans so he can make all the countries of the world communist. He’s been taking children from all over the world so he can export Russian goods and be the richest man alive. I overheard Callum/ Phineus —who’s the son of Debob and the brother of Indigo—tell Margo, Indigo and Klaus, that once Debob has enough power to rule over the world he’s going to make every single country in the world communist.”
Winnie shrugged again. “Oh well. The world sucks. I get it. Come on Vic, let’s get everyone and go already.”
Vikki winced again at Winnie calling her by that name.
“But Winnie, Callum—I mean Phineus-- has taken Indigo, Margo and Klaus. We’ve got to go rescue them,” Vikki said again.
“Okay whatever Vic. We’ll rescue them later. Let’s just get the heck out of here alright?” Winnie said, as if she were a teenager answering her mother’s complaints about her latest grades.
Vikki nodded as Winnie smashed the door knob, forcing the door open. Her hand was bleeding, in a way that seemed extremely painful.
But Winnie didn’t do anything about it. In fact, she seemed to not even know or acknowledge the pain in her hand.
“Something very weird is going on with Winnie,” Vikki thought to herself as she and the other orphan girls were lead down the corridor.
Chapter .27
On the Way to Debob’s Palace
“We need a plan,” Margo whispered to her brother Klaus.
Indigo interrupted with her sarcastic monotonous voice before Klaus could respond, “No dur, dimwits.”
“But…”Margo started.
“We’re chained in handcuffs,” Klaus finished.
Indigo rolled her eyes at the twins. “Where is the sense of individuality? Do you guys always finish each other’s sentences?”
“INDIGO! Don’t you have a plan? You’re the smartest one here in the group,” Klaus exclaimed.
“I DON’T FLIPING HAVE ONE!” she said roaring.
It really disheartened Margo and Klaus. If Indigo out of all people didn’t have a plan, then they were seriously utterly screwed.
“Can’t you convince your own father to stop all this, considering the fact you yourself was an orphan once?” Margo asked Indigo.
Callum had said that Margo and Klaus were the only two who were going to be thrown in a manual labor camp and Indigo would be and safe and sound with him. Debob was apparently dying to meet his estranged daughter.
“Ha,” Indigo said giving them a sarcastic laugh.
“You guys are dumber than I’d imagined,” she said, “Like really, you want me to go up to the man whose he’s obsessed with communism and ask him--like one of those dumb girl scout girls when they’re selling cookies-- to kindly stop killing the orphans of the world?”
They all looked at Indigo if they really wanted her to do that.
“Oh come on, the man’s crazy. Why would he want to listen to his own daughter?” she asked.
“Do we have any hope in the matter?”
Indigo ignored her.
They all stopped talking from that point onwards.
And then Indigo whispered to Margo. “Do you have a pen?”
“What? Why?” she whispered back.
Indigo raised her hands which had handcuffs on them and shook them and looked at Margo as if she were stupid.
Margo came to a realization that the pen was going to be a way to get out of the handcuffs. She reached into her pocket and handed Indigo the pen, and immediately checked if Callum was looking her unchain herself from the handcuffs. Luckily, he was too busy driving and talking on his cell phone.
But unfortunately, the moment she got the handcuffs off, they had already reached the Debob’s palace.
Indigo had no choice but put the handcuffs back on and hide the pen in her pant pocket.
She sighed as two men covered in black clothing led her two friends away to somewhere new, while she herself was carried over Phineus’s shoulder into Debob’s palace. She needed a new plan.
Chapter .28
Scout Halverson
“So, Scout,” Crow said leaning on his elbow against the pure white wall. “What are you… uh… planning to do with the building?”
He had decided to follow this interesting girl instead of ordering the other kids to go get their blankets. He had given his second in chief (a very large twelve year old boy) to do the directing of their escape.
Scout Halverson got a card out of her pocket and put it against the pure white sleek wall. “Get your elbow away from the wall.”
“Wha—“ he said as he instantly had time to remove his elbow from the seemingly blank wall. It opened instantly, revealing something that looked like an elevator.
Crow tried hard not to look surprised as all of the kids from Scout’s group huddled into the big elevator.
Scout pulled him into the elevator quickly and pressed a button. The wall closed and all the sudden it seemed that they were going at a hundred miles per hour at north eastern distance.
“So, how’d you get that card?” Crow asked Scout, yelling over the loud jeering noise the transportation made.
“I stole it,” she replied, over the loud noise.
They stood there in silence until Scout Halverson said, “So, do you have a personal vengeance like us, Crow?”
He looked at the girl. He hadn’t introduced himself to the girl and yet she knew who he was. “How’d you know my name?”
“Well I overheard you talking to that Winnie girl earlier, and I found out,” the girl said. “What’s the history between you and Debob then?”
“Uhh,” Crow said trying to think.
But nothing really bad happened between him and Debob in the past. He was only doing this, because apparently Winnie had told him to. Because apparently, he just had to be a hero, to the millions of orphaned children in the world.
“I don’t have one,” he said finally answering. He felt embarrassed, that he had no particular hate towards TSS.
“So you’re just trying to be a hero?” Scout said in a manner that made Crow feel even more embarrassed.
She leaned closer to Crow and said, “I hate heroes.”
“But you’re an exception,” she said leaning back into a normal posture, like catwoman, except with more tattered clothing.
Crow couldn’t help but feel relieved.
“Where are we going anyways, Scout?” he asked the girl.
“To hell,” she said monotonously.
The door of the transportation device opened.
And it was just like what Scout said. Hell.
Chapter .29
Indigo Meets her Father
Indigo, had never been so fancied up in her life before. Because, the second that Callum set her on the floor, she was chained to a chair pampered by her father’s many servants.
One particular servant was very happy to see her. Her old nanny.
Apparently, this nanny was given to her by her Debob Kalob when she was in America. Debob’s wife had all the sudden died of old age (because she was older than Debob forty years more, who had only married her for her political status). But Debob was too concerned about his political career, to announce that Indigo was his daughter.
He had then sent Phineus and Indigo a nanny, and paid luxuriously for their education and well being in the orphanage. He made extra sure that Indigo and Phineus Callum had the best of everything in the orphanage. Phineus however had purposely taken all of Indigo’s luxuries (which included her nanny and all her servants) to make sure she hardened up to become the person she was now.
“Oh dearie,” her Nanny said in heavily accented Russian, “I’ve missed you so much.”
Indigo didn’t have the heart to tell her Nanny that she really didn’t remember her at all. But the moment was so touching. It was as if she had a mother for once.
“You’ve gotten taller! And you look just like your mother. We could do something with that beautiful hair,” her Nanny went on as she unclothed Indigo and put on a black halter dress on her and white long sleeves.
Indigo felt very uncomfortable sitting there chained to a chair in the open space with only her a undershirt and panties on as her Nanny put on the clothing.
“And you have your father’s expressive intense eyes,” her Nanny said commenting her Indigo’s dark brown eyes.
“What is with old people and old memories?” Indigo thought to herself as the Nanny put fixed her complicated beautiful bun.
“You know this necklace used to be your mother’s,” Nanny said as she put on her chained necklace on Indigo.
It was the color of sapphire blue. On it was the initials, DK&YH.
“What was my mother’s name?” Indigo asked her nanny.
“Your mother’s name was Yun Hee,” the nanny answered. “I used to know her, you know. She was such a nice lady and she made the best Korean food for all of us to eat, if Debob was here.”
“She’s so different from me,” Indigo thought to herself.
“Were they in love, nanny?” she asked her nanny.
Her Nanny giggled. “Yes, they were in love, like two naïve teenagers madly in love. I remember your mother telling me that no matter what risk, she and Debob would stay irrevocably in love and get married the moment his wife was dead.”
The Nanny sighed as she turned to look at Indigo. “You look beautiful dearie.”
“Wait, what?” Indigo thought to herself. Nobody ever called her beautiful.
Nanny handed her a mirror nearby and she took a glance at herself.
There she was. She felt like a gloomy princess in that traditional dress. Her hair, for some reason why now gave her face the correctly emphasized her round face that she hated. She never felt more beautiful than at that moment.
A servant walked into the room and announced, “Debob Kelob is now ready to see you, my lady.”
He unchained Indigo from the chair and led her to her through a corridor of gold. Indigo felt like she entered into a medieval castle.
After a few minutes of walking down the long corridor of rich furs, portraits of famous people, and painted gold walls, Indigo found her brother smirking at her.
“I can’t believe you’re wearing a dress,” Phineus said. He was dressed in a fancy tuxedo.
Indigo glared at her brother, “You know if I had the chance to kick you the ass I would totally do so.”
“Wow, such aggression,” Phineus said still smirking, “You look pretty by the way, Indigo.”
“You know, I would get those handcuffs off you so you can look like a proper debutante, but I don’t feel I trust you,” Phineus said.
“Shall I escort you down to meet our father?”
Indigo glared at her brother, who had linked his arm between her. They walked into the room with Indigo struggling to run away with her black sparkly high heels.
She stopped trying however when she saw her father.
Because she recognized him.
He was the man who had often visited her orphanage every two or three weeks, when she was three years and younger.
She had often referred to him as ‘The Rich Guy Who Loves Kids’, because he occasionally donated thousands of dollars to the orphanages and usually played with Margo and Klaus. Vikki and Winnie hadn’t transferred over to their orphanage back then.
However for some reason why, ‘The Rich Guy Who Loves Kids’ or Debob Kalob, stopped visiting them, she didn’t understand back then. She had missed him because he had usually treated her with ice cream on hot summer days and that she felt a special daughter to father connection with him, even though she didn’t know he was her father.
“Hello, Indigo.” Debob said.
There was something in his voice that made him seem so much more different than that of the man who had taken care of her for those first three summers of her life. He seemed not like ‘The Rich Guy Who Loves Kids’ but like ‘The Power Hungry Man Who Hates Everyone’.
“Hello father,” Indigo responded.
He nodded his head. “Phineus unchain your sister.”
Phineus looked shocked. “But father…”
“Do it. Don’t you see your sister is uncomfortable in those handcuffs?” Debob said curtly.
Phineus ordered a servant to take off the handcuffs.
Indigo didn’t run away. Besides, there were guards on the wall and she was just a mere eleven year old girl.
They stood there in utter silence. Indigo was the first to speak.
“Okay, Debob let’s cut to the chase. You know exactly that the world domination plan is ridiculous,” she said.
Debob was amused by his daughter’s directness. “I can see you inherited your directness from me.”
Indigo glared at her father.
“Okay, okay. Yes I know world domination has failed numerously. And nobody has quite achieved the goal of solely ruling the world,” Debob said. “But I will be different. I have a solution.”
“What’s that?” Indigo asked her father.
“That is not for you to know,” her father answered.
The daughter gritted her teeth in agitation.
“So, I met your friend Winnie earlier,” Debob said. “Apparently she’s brilliant at translating multiple languages.”
“Winnie? Really?” Indigo said.
“Of course,” Debob responded. “She’s quite the delightful creature. Always asking questions. Of course she had to be eliminated.”
Indigo was tempted to say, “WHAT!”, but she remained her posture of coldness and nonchalance. She would not give into Debob’s cruel game.
“Will I be eliminated too if I follow in Winnie’s example?” Indigo asked her father.
“Of course,” her father responded.
Yup, this guy was definitely ‘Power Hungry Man Who Hated Everyone’. Including his own daughter.
“Bagh,” her father said, “But I’m sure you’ll never follow in your pestering friend’s example.”
“Why?” Indigo asked her father.
He shrugged. “Well because you’re a Kalob. You’re intelligent. You do what you’re told and excel at it.”
And it was absolutely true. Indigo had no rebuttal for such an answer. Everything she did was under the order of someone who had a higher authority over her.
“Come on, Indigo. This is silly talk,” Debob said rising from his throne like chair. “Let us eat breakfast.”
Indigo hadn’t noticed that time had passed so fast. It only seemed three hours ago that she had rode in Phineus’s mobile and discovered that her father was Debob Kelob.
Chapter .30
What happened to Winnie?
Vikkie glanced suspiciously at her small friend who was now carelessly walking down the corridor. Like a man.
Literally.
She had never seen Winnie walk that way with her short legs. She was now flaunting down the corridor as if she were a soldier marching.
“Winnie!” Vikki whispered. “Stop walking like that!”
“Like what?” Winnie asked innocently.
“Like a man? Don’t you realize it?” Vikki asked her.
“Er… I had no idea. Honest,” Winnie said.
Vikki stared at her for a moment. “You know what. I can’t stand this. There is something fishy going on with you. Very fishy.”
“Nothing’s fishy. I swear,” Winnie said. “You’re just nuts.”
But then she pushed a button on a blank wall and smiled at Vikki, waving a small farewell.“See you later alligator.”
The floor of where they were standing on suddenly slid open.
“Winnie!” Vikki screamed a long wail, before she dropped into a cushiony floor, along with the other orphan girls.
Winnie gave Vikki a monotonous stare from above. Vikki looked at the smirking Winnie.
“What exactly was that for Winnie? Why are you betraying me like how Julius Ceaser was betrayed by Brutus?” Vikki asked Winnie.
But all Winnie said was, “I was on a mission. I don’t know who you are. And stop calling me Winnie. My name is Temperance Winters.”
A pretty lady then came over to Winnie and said, “Temperance. It’s time for you to go back.”
Winnie nodded at the pretty lady and followed her out of the room.
“Wait!” Vikki screamed. “Winnie! You can’t just leave us here all alone!”
Winnie ignored her and continued walking with the lady.
“Winnie! Winnie! Don’t go! You know me! You know you’re name isn’t Temperance Winters!” Vikki continued screaming.
“I mean for godsakes, you’re Chinese! And what kind of the name is Temperance!”
Winnie continued walking on.
“WINNIE!” Vikki screamed one last time in desperation.
It wasn’t until Winnie had walked out of the room, that she caught her reflection on glass wall. What stared back at herself, confused at what was looking back at her.
“Wait,” she told the sweet lady.
The Sweet Lady wasn’t as sweet as she said with annoyance and quite nervously, “We must go home, Temperance.”
Winnie stared at her reflection once more and gently touched her face as if she hadn’t recognized herself.
“How strange. That girl was right. I am Chinese. Why?” Winnie thought to herself.
“Come on, Temperance,” the Sweet Lady said impatiently.
Winnie straightened herself up and followed the Sweet Lady out the door, not glancing back at all.
She was lead down a number of stairways and into an elevator looking thing, quite similar to the one Crow and Scout took earlier. The Sweet Lady then pushed a button and suddenly Winnie was transported at one hundred miles per hour at an eastward position.
“Freak!!” Winnie said, except using a more altered dirty version of the word. It was a word Winnie—who knew apparently 26 languages—would never ever use.
The elevator speed then slowly decreased.
“I hate that thing,” Winnie said sighing.
The doors of the elevator opened and Winnie descended onto the stairs which lead to a large where kids monotonously walked around the room. There were three levels. The one which Winnie was at only had two or three rooms, where all the Sweet Ladies slept. The second level was filled with technology and a single guy operated from that. On the third level were at least twenty kids who walked around, ate lunch, doing yoga and did generally nothing.
Winnie followed the lady down another stairway and into the tech level. A man with nerdy glasses greeted her. “Hello, Temperance. Ready for your treatment?”
Winnie nodded. The nerdy glasses man led her into a chair, which she sat in comfortably. The nerdy glasses man pressed a few buttons for the chair to descend backwards, into a place where Winnie fit her head comfortably in. A blue light suddenly flashed in the place where Winnie’s head was. Winnie, who had her eyes closed, gasped for a moment and then the chair ascended upwards again.
Winnie looked around noticing the Sweet Lady and the nerdy glasses man.
She rubbed her head tiredly as if she was three years old. “Did I fall asleep?”
The nerdy glasses man nodded. “For a while, Kallicore. A little while.”
Winnie smiled at him and the Sweet Lady, who then led her downstairs, for breakfast.
Chapter .31
Crow Finds Out First
“What the—“Crow said as he saw a piles and piles of different types of natural minerals packed in barrels. There was a storage room full and the temperatures were above a hundred degrees. He felt like he was going to evaporate.
Scout sighed. “Home Sweet Home.”
She quickly yelled some Russian to the children who now scampered all over the place and began gathering barrels of the natural minerals.
“We’re making a bomb,” Scout, with her arms crossed over one another as her group grabbed as many natural minerals as they could.
“But what if it isn’t enough…” Crow said until Scout yelled that due to the calculations she made earlier, if they had enough gunpowder they could eventually find to dissemble the tightly bonded titanium carbide and eventually blow up the whole building.
One of the boys were dragging a barrel of potassium nitrate fainted. Crow recognized him as the boy who fainted earlier. Scout went over to the boy’s side and shook him back awake. His pupils were extremely dilated as he sat back up and shook him back awake.
“You alright?” Scout asked the boy in Russian.
The boy spoke some Russian words.
Scout looked up at Crow anxiously.
Because right behind him, there was a group of tall big burly men dressed in black.
“Europa,” the man said addressing Scout by that name, “It’s over.”
Scout punched the man with surprising strength making him fall down onto the dark floor. “Not until I say it.”
Chao broke loose and all the kids who were previously carrying barrels across the room, were charging at the black clothed men.
Crow couldn’t do anything. The only thing he was good at doing was shooting guns and at punching people at his own age. He didn’t know any good fighting moves like the other kids, who seemed to not know the definition of danger. But it definitely didn’t stop him from trying to punch one of the burly men.
The problem was, the moment he brought his knuckles onto the man’s chest, the man didn’t budge. In fact, Crow’s punch was a mere scratch on his muscular chest.
And his own fist had so much pain it felt like ten million needles had been inserted into his knuckles.
Crow held his fist in pain.
Luckily, Scout was nearby and she was able to knock the man Crow was fighting with, unconscious.
She looked at Crow displeasingly, noticing that he seemed to wincing in pain from his knuckles. “Be a man already.”
And continued fighting off the burly men.
“Wow,” Crow thought to himself, “Did she actually insult me? Out of all people?”
He couldn’t feel but a bit ashamed of himself at that moment.
After a few of the burly men had been knocked unconsciously Scout yelled out to Crow and her group, “Grab the barrels into the transporter already!”
Crow and a few of the kids--who were too weak to fight-- dragged six barrels of gunpowder (which was covered safely in storage), into the transporter.
Scout then finished off the one of the burly man and leaped into the elevator with Crow and the kids, gasping quick breaths. Some of the kids were still fighting, finishing off the burly men, as the transporter closed. Scout pressed the button labeled ‘Camp’ as the transporter began moving at a hundred miles per hour southward.
All the kids laid there beside the gunpowder, exhaustedly lying on the floor of the transporter.
Crow was the first to speak as he sputtered out, “What the hell was that?”
He was hyperventilating. “I mean, why did those burly guys call you Europa—a moon of Jupiter—when your name is Scout and why did they say that ‘it was over’? And how in the world did you manage to beat the hell out of those guys—who are twice your size?”
Scout turned over to Crow. “You don’t know?”
“What? What else is there to know besides Debob Kalob enslaving orphans around the world?” Crow asked Scout.
Then Scout just laughed. “All this time, you didn’t know a thing. And you’re trying to be a hero. HA.”
Crow didn’t get it. “What? What’s so funny? Just because I don’t know a thing?”
Scout ignored him. “You’re doing a terrible job trying to be a hero.”
“I don’t get it,” Crow admitted.
Scout sighed and stopped laughing. “I guess I’d better inform you before you do something stupid.”
“What?”
“The thing is… Debob Kalob is an extremist. In communism. He wants the whole world to be communist because apparently every one can gain profit from it, even though it means enslaving a weaker group to do the hard work. We orphans are the weaker group,” Scout said.
Crow was a bit surprised to hear this. “Well, okay. Still. That’s an impossible dream. It’s not like in other countries people are willing to do something as extremist as that. The United States has been really stubbornly frigid in their capitalist government even though their economy level is teetering into the deep end. And without the United States—a world superpower—agreeing to such an idea, it’s nearly impossible to make the whole world communist.”
Scout was smiling at him. “You’ve sure do got smarts.”
Crow blushed.
“Anyways, you’re right. Without the United States, Debob could’nt exactly achieve his goal of world Communism. So, in pursuit of his dream thought of a marvelous idea to force the United States to become a communist government. At that time, I was living in an American Orphanage. That was four years ago when I was seven and I didn’t know anything I know now.”
“But then how’d you learn everything you know now in a short period of short period? I mean, that’s an impossible amount of information to input in your head,” Crow said interrupting.
“Well let me finish. Anyways, Debob took me in and told me to sit on a chair in this secluded looking room. There were a group of scientists all over the room and looking at charts and stuff. There this one guy, who told me I was going to take a nap for a little while. So I sat on the chair and the next thing I know the chair is descending back and all the sudden my head has this nice pillow to put on. And then the strangest thing happens. A blue light flashes over my eyes, and then I forget what my first and last name is, who my family is, where I am, why I was sitting in a chair and who I am.”
Crow was now immersed into Scout’s story. “So you just forgot everything?”
Scout nodded her head. “Yeah. I was put in my tabula rasa state. It’s when—“
But Crow already knew what it was. “A blank state, where your brain has no built-in mental content and knowledge that came from experience and perception.”
Scout continued on with her story. “The moment I was wiped of my previous knowledge, I was imprinted with a lot of knowledge. I had the knowledge of how to hold someone in a certain person to make them unconscious but not yet kill them. I had the knowledge of all the languages of the world. You see, Debob Kalob was a smart man. He knew that people wouldn’t be expecting a small kid to have the killing power of a soldier or the knowledge of a rocket scientist.”
“So how’d you get out of the whole thing?” Crow asked her.
“I was surprised myself. It was that, I had developed this immunity. I didn’t remember my original identity, no. But I’d had developed this sense of knowledge from all the people’s personalities I’d gathered. I’d built up a totally different personality from everyone else’s personalities.”
“And I figured out what Debob Kalob was trying to do, when one time he ordered me to spy on an important American political leader. I was imprinted with the identity of a Hyperthymestic—someone who remembers everything in the past with intricate details—and I’d reported everything back to Debob Kalob. Apparently he was concerned whether America was still focusing on its economic issues, because if so he would find the right time to strike, as soon as he gathered all fifty of his robot like orphans.”
“It was then I planned a revolution against him, with twenty of all the robot made kids, to escape. I had put back everyone’s ordinary personality back it, but unfortunately, their minds couldn’t absorb all of the knowledge like I did. I had to take out their knowledge of English.”
“And so you’ve been plotting against him this whole entire time? Is that your personal vengeance?” Crow asked her.
Scout nodded. “Of course it is. They made me murder at least two hundred people before I realized that I was actually murdering innocent people. I’m only eleven years old, and I’ve already murdered two hundred people. They don’t understand how it feels to be someone they’re not.”
She spoke with anger, as gleams of hatred sparked into her eyes.
“And you decided that when I came, it was the right time?”
“Yes. I did. Turns out you didn’t know anything. But it’s alright. We’re still going to blow this place to shreds and kill all the technology before it affects anyone else.”
They sat there in silence until the door of the transporter opened.
Crow opened his mouth to speak. “So I should I call you Europa or Scout now?”
