ALOHA PEASNAPS MAJOR CURVEBALL COMING YOUR WAY THIS CHAPTER AND ONE REQUEST: PLEASE VOTE FOR THIS BOOK IN THE BRIGADE AWARDS, TO FIND IT TYPE IN THE BRIGADE AWARDS 2017 AND UNDER WATTPADDERS CHOICE AWARDS YOU CAN VOTE FOR THIS BOOK WHICH IS UNDER THE ADVENTURE GENRE SO PLZZZZZZZZ HELP YOUR LOCAL AUTHOR OUT IT WOULD MEAN A LOT:) ~  #298 LEGGO

His eyebrows shot up.

"Ummm, sure, yeah, what part of the house do you want me to help with?"

"Upstairs, me and my sister's rooms are World War I and II respectively."

He let out a bellow of laughter.

"This is the first time anyone's ever asked me to help them clean their room, not gonna lie."

Lyla opened the door wider for him to walk through, and motioned for him to follow her.

"Really, not even after a house party? Oh, wear your shoes into the house; you'll need it."

He heeded her last comment and replied, "Nah, I don't stick around for that."

"Don't tell me you're a virgin."

"Okay."

"You are?" she turned around to look at him, incredulity evident on her face.

"You told me not to tell you I was a virgin, so..."

Her nose pinched upwards, and she continued walking up the stairs. "You just don't look like you would be a virgin, that's all."

"Did you just indirectly call me hot?"

"No, I just indirectly called you popular. Popular people tend-"

"What the actual crap happened here Lyla?" he hissed.

They had entered the top tier of stairs; a lot of the drywall from Divya's room had fallen onto this part of the staircase, not to mention the load of plaster that had settled all across the hallway. His face had a look of astonishment plastered all over it. He turned to her with a hard frown.

"Where are your parents?" he demanded.

All trace of his high was gone, and his eyes no longer held their glazed, dumb look from before. Lyla's lips twitched.

"Business and family trips. My mom's in France with my sister, while my dad's in China, but he'll join them later. They have to attend one of my cousin's wedding in France."

He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, she swiftly threw him off the top of the staircase and onto the carpeted floor below. He didn't even have time to process what happened if Lyla could tell anything from the dazed look on his face.

As he hit the ground with a solid THUD, Lyla continued to smile with morbid pleasure. She knew he wouldn't die from the impact; he had a solid, healthy body that would aid him in recuperation, and it was clear from the last excursion she'd had at their house that their defense teacher prepared him and his brother well. Her intention was to give him a large enough concussion that would cause short-term memory loss. It was one of the first moves Sarah had taught her. She smiled at the memory; it was the first time Lyla had gotten a concussion.

She quickly popped out one of the blunt knives out of the phone and she stood in front of the wall of her room. She lifted her arm and dug the side with the knife deep into the wall. She dragged the knife down, her arms straining against the solid build of the wall. After she finished her first cut into the wall, she made a parallel cut. Her hand felt sore and it slipped multiple times off her phone, but when she finally made both cuts in the barrier, she lifted her foot and gave a hard kick. She felt the wall give way, and she stepped into her room.

She was dusty again, but she couldn't care less. Her room was painted a bright venetian red. The swath of her bed was splattered with it; her computer was also coated with that same shade of red.

On the wall was a message written in that same color which read: You're only a pawn on our chess board, but it was nice playing with you.

Below it, on her nightstand, lay a head.

It was Vadim's head.

Vadim Afanasy.

His eyes were still open, and blood still streamed from the base of his neck forming a puddle around him. Lyla's only physical response to blink multiple times, although her heart beat much faster than usual. Whatever had cut his head made a very fine, straight-edged cut; it wasn't jagged, and the visage on his face was one of surprise, not pain. Good thing Grant didn't see this.

Lyla went to his head and touched the blood on her rug. The blood felt cool on her skin, but when she placed three of her fingers on Vadim's cheek, it still felt warm with life. She placed both her palms on Vadim's cheeks, and spared a tear for the man who didn't deserve to die, especially for her. Vadim may have been an ass at times, but he had saved her more times than not; he had held onto his compassion, even after he entered the world of assassins and mafias. She owed her life to him, not the other way around. He definitely didn't deserve to die for her.

Her thoughts drifted to her parents, when she suddenly felt a pulse. Her eyes flipped wide open, and she quickly withdrew her hands from the man's head. She reread the message that was slowly dripping from its original pristine state.

She quickly rushed to her closet, and uncovered the suitcase hidden behind her profuse amount of clothes. Inside the suitcase, lay multiple sanitary bags along with test tubes, an array of poisons, medicines, and other miscellaneous objects. She briskly pulled out the test tubes and a sanitary bag and lay them on the floor of the closet, the only area of her room that was left untouched. She then swiftly went into her sister's room, took the USB wire that charged her sister's Kindle, and plugged it into the phone the JAO gave her. Back in her room, Lyla took out her own Samsung phone that she had (luckily) charged throughout the day, and took pictures of the carnage.

She dialed her mother at exactly 8:03 p.m., and it rang exactly three times.

A person on the other end picked up.

Lyla held her breath.

The person who picked up didn't say a word, and cut the line after approximately five seconds. She gripped her phone tightly, and pocketed it. There was not a single thing that she liked about this situation, but the phone call had definitely brightened her day. If there was one thing she was good at, it was tracking calls, and the fact that her mom had an Apple phone made it all the more easier; she could just use her father's iPhone to track it.

But research would have to come later.

The people who kidnapped her family weren't any ordinary people; they would most likely move their location by the time she found out where the phone was. Lyla continued to ponder the day's events while swabbing and collecting the paint on the walls, as well as Vadim's blood. She didn't have any preservative with her to put on his head, so instead she placed his head in the sanitary bag, his blood still dripping from it, and she wrapped it multiple times to place it in their freezer.

Since she was downstairs anyways, she went to Grant who was sprawled on the carpet of their living room. Lyla inspected him, looking for any signs of injury. Satisfied with her work, she proceeded to check his pockets for his phone, and found it lodged safely in the front pocket of his jeans.

Lyla quickly took it upstairs, connected it to her JAO laptop, and ran a program to disable his password. When she finally heard the faint ping that accompanied with a bright flash of light from his phone, she opened his contacts, looked for Jack's number, and saved his number on her phone. She then went to her own computer, that was coated in dry red paint, and she quickly took off its air-tight plastic cover and unveiled the protected, paint-free glass screen behind it.

She downloaded all of the applications and existing files on his phone, and once done, she called Jack from her own cellphone. When he picked up she said, "Hey Jack?"

"Umm, hi, who is this?" Jack said.

"This is Lily, I'm calling because Grant came over to my house pretty high off weed, and he kind of...keeled over I guess, and knocked himself out on my porch."

"Oh, huh, yeah I knew he was stressed out about something, but I wasn't sure...okay yeah I'll come over and get him for you, don't worry. Ummm, where do you live?"

"I live right across from him, remember?"

"RIGHT - okay, I'm on my way, I'll be there in five, ok?"

"Thanks Jack."

"No problem Lily."

The call ended, and she dragged Grant over her doorstep and onto her barren porch, empty except for one shriveled plant in parch, cracked soil in the corner. She pulled him so that he leaned on the wall outside her home, and she sat next to him and checked the proliferate amount of notifications that had accumulated on her phone since she had last checked. Multiple Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat notifications cluttered the screen of her phone. She clicked through most of them, random people friending her, following her, etc. It was right when she was about to exit her Instagram, that one of the notifications caught her eye. One of Evans' fictional cousins had friended her. She went and checked the profile, which was, to her dismay, private. She didn't want to accept the request just because there were some real pictures of her on her Instagram; it was one of the only social medias that JAO had no access to because she had never disclosed the fact that she ever had her own private account.

But how did Evans find it?

Her account was under the name Mariam Kurian; it was one of her family member's names, and no one from her current school had friended her on this account. Much less a classmate's "family" member.

Before she could do anymore investigation though, she saw a bright red mustang pull up onto her driveway. It stopped in front of her house, and the driver's door popped open, revealing a blonde-hair, blue-eyed boy. He smiled when he saw her, and he jogged over to where she was sitting. She rose off the ground slowly, taking her time, almost as if to emphasize how tired she was from practice and from carrying his rather heavy friend that lay limp beside her. Needless to say, she didn't have to exaggerate much. Jack was giving his friend a once-over in the meantime, and commented, "He looks fucking wasted. What exactly happened?" he said, turning his quizzical eyes towards Lyla.

"I'm actually not sure myself. He came to my house and was trying to apologize for being an ass from earlier today. But for one, he's never apologized to me before, so I just thought he was being exceptionally nice or weird at first. But then he just kind of lost his balance because he let go of the door for a while, and he just fell. When I went over to help him, I could smell the weed pretty clearly, and he was knocked out cold."

Jack scrutinized his friend and said, "He actually tried apologizing?"

"Ummmm, yep."

"Wow. He never does that unless he legitimately respects you, and I'm one of closest friends, but he still treats me like shit. So congratulations Lily. I don't know how you did it."

"Oh." Lyla just looked over to Grant and wondered how much he'd smoked, because in her own opinion, she was nowhere close to getting his respect. She couldn't even beat him in a race of two miles. She didn't want to remember the experience; especially because more than one person had beat her. She gave a small shudder at the memory, and she looked up to find Jack smirking at her.

"What?" she demanded, her eyebrows pulling together, the skin of her forehead making the smallest of folds.

"Nothing," he said with a little chuckle.

Lyla threw him a glare, and helped Jack who was starting to lift Grant off the floor. Lyla hung him on her arms, while Jack went under him and heaved him on his shoulders. He gave her a quick bye, and strided over to his house, letting out the occasional grunt every now and then.

She watched them go, and when Jack rang Grant's doorbell, she pivoted on the balls of her feet back into the house.

Lyla went back to her room and she started to come up with a plan to address the situation. Her migraine hadn't left her, and her room was still not ready for human habitation. She had homework to do, and she had no time to rest.

She frowned at the thought of pulling an all-nighter on her second day of school, but she grabbed her backpack and trekked back downstairs. Research would have to come after homework. Lyla went to her parent's room, and opened the door.

The room was untouched, just like the rest of the house, aside from her and Divya's room. There was no sign of a struggle, although her father must've been captured here in this room, unless...

No.

Lyla shook her head.

Her father was a cruel man at times, but he still had morals; he was still her father. There was no way he would have pulled off a heist like this. What connections could he have possibly had anyways?

She discarded the thought from her mind for the moment, but like any good assassin, she did not eliminate the option.

That thought had put a damper on her already chaotic mind; she couldn't shake off the ominous feeling that she was being watched, even now.

Nowhere was safe.

It was no accident that she was the only one from her family who wasn't kidnapped. Lyla kept shaking her head and rubbing her temples in order to stop thinking about it, but it only led to a deluge of more negative thoughts.

She grabbed her mother's laptop off their nightstand, and opened it up to start her comp-sci (AP Computer Science) homework. Mr. Kumar had assigned for them to write a report on a simple code they made in class. She had to write it's purpose, what had to happen after a test run on it, any troubleshooting errors, and how they were fixed. It was 10:04 p.m. when she started her report, and 1 hour and 56 minutes later, she finished with no distractions.

The time glaring at her from her parent's alarm clock only served to remind her of the acute pain within her ailed head. Her migraine had only worsened from staring at the brightly lit computer screen. She couldn't do any research; it would only be a waste of time, and rather detrimental for her health as well. Instead she shut down the laptop and left it on the floor beside the bed. Lyla closed her eyes, and pulled her parent's soft, cotton sheets over her head, and was lulled to sleep by her own rhythmic breaths.

Picture: Vadim Afanasy

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