"Hey kid, where are your parents?" A woman sitting across from me gave me a suspicious look, staring at me with narrow, bespectacled eyes. Yes, a chance to get help!

I fought against the Glitch's influence harder than I had ever done before, clenching my jaw as I tried to force my mouth to form the one word I wanted it to: help.

"Oh, they're just on the other side of that divider getting Starbucks," the Glitch replied effortlessly through me, circumventing my efforts to regain control over my body with ease. It was getting to the point that the degree of power he or she had over me was almost insulting.

"Ah, I see. Why are you going to California today? Don't you have school tomorrow?" she asked casually, trying to start a conversation. The oblivious look on her face angered me, although I knew this feeling was irrational. I was being kidnapped right in front of her eyes, and she didn't even notice it! Yet, how could she? The Glitches had this planned perfectly.

I was done for.

"I'm already excused for a couple of days so we can go on vacation. Tickets are cheaper during the school year, you know."

"Oh, I see," she said while nodding. She then resumed staring out the window at the other planes taking off.

When it was time to board the plane, the Glitch once again started controlling people. The woman checking boarding passes then let me on without one, and my last hope of getting stopped was lost. I was going to San Francisco in the middle of the night. Period.

Seeing that the Glitch had slightly relaxed the iron grip on my body, I leaned back in my spacious seat and began to drift off to sleep. The person who was controlling me had been kind enough to get me in the business class, but I still felt that I could use better seating. Perhaps it was my years of travel in a private jet talking, but I really didn't think I had enough room for the comfortable accommodation of my legs. The Glitch can put me anywhere on the plane without a problem. Would it have killed him or her to put me in first class?

This thought lingered at the edges of my mind as I faded out of consciousness, exhausted from all the running around at midnight that I had been doing.

I woke up when we were what felt like about halfway through the flight to drink some orange juice and look out the window. There wasn't anything exciting to see, just the plane's wing and a few wispy clouds, but I was in the window seat, so it was the only thing to look at.

I slowly felt the hold of the Glitch's power returning, as if he or she somehow knew that I was now awake. My head turned to the side as the Glitch forced me to keep gazing out the window. I watched in awe as the clouds in front of me began to form into letters.

At first, their shapes were blurry and indistinguishable, but it didn't take long for the Glitch to take a hint from my squinting and make the edges of the characters more defined, condensing the clouds into more solid, white blocks. The message they spelled out filled me with both shock and relief.

"It's me, Claire,"

After about five seconds, they burst out of their formation like miniature fireworks, before reorganizing themselves into a new grouping. This cycle continued until the final message spelled itself out against the pale, blue backdrop of the sky. Meanwhile, the clouds zoomed through the air, traveling in a path parallel to that of the plane in order to stay in my view.

It's... very strange at WGO.

Really need you.

Sorry about how I'm getting you here.

It was the best I could do.

Phew. I slowly loosened my vise-like grip on the hand rests of my seat as the tension left my muscles. Finding myself now able to relax, I dozed off again.

It was just Claire.

I was woken up by the harsh thump of the plane's wheels against the ground, which caused my skull to bump quite uncomfortably against the headrest. We had landed. I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood up to exit, claiming my place in the quickly forming line of people that was beginning to conglomerate in the narrow aisle. Because I was really close to the front and got off quickly, nobody had the time to question the fact that I was a kid traveling alone with no luggage. Claire took control once again, zipping me through the San Francisco airport to a seemingly random point where she made me pause in front of a large window that looked out over an orderly row of runways.

This was when things started to get really strange. Right before my eyes, the thick glass of the window melted away. Well, perhaps "melted" isn't the best term. It practically dissolved into nothingness, allowing the wind to blow freely onto the exposed skin of my forearm. A heavy harness woven of thick cloth, like the kind you'd use to go bungee jumping, appeared around my waist, and a rope sprung up from it, tethering me to a point on the airport's roof that was too far up for me to see. Claire must've placed some kind of shield between me and the rest of the people in the terminal, because no one seemed to be questioning the sudden appearances and disappearances of items.

When I climbed up into the empty windowsill, crouching with my back to the inside of the airport, I realized what my sister was about to make me do.

No! I thought in protest. If Claire could sense my discomfort with her idea, she did nothing to ease it. What felt like a large, invisible hand slammed into my back, sending me flying out onto the nearest runway. For a moment, I was stricken with a bout of terror as an unfamiliar, weightless sensation filled me. However, this didn't last long. My harness caught me just inches above the ground, painfully pinching my thighs. Just seconds later, the harness disappeared, dropping me onto the asphalt, and I rubbed my sore legs, pleasantly surprised to find that I had regained control of my upper body. I expected Claire to whisk me off to someplace else, but quite strangely, I remained stationary.

This was rather confusing. Why stop here in the middle of a runway, where I could easily get run over by a plane? Soon, I had my answer. The entire section of the airport in front of me morphed before my eyes, transforming into a group of black buildings decorated with three gigantic letters, "WGO." I saw a figure appear from near the buildings and begin to make its way towards me. It was Claire! She was dressed in purple pajamas, her hair was messy, and she looked very tired. The last reason was probably from the effort of bringing me here, and the fact that it was past midnight. I didn't doubt that she had been up even longer than I had.

"How in the world did you do all of that from here?" I stared at my grinning sister incredulously. "And did half of the airport really just turn into WGO headquarters?"

"It's a little trick Amanda taught me earlier tonight. She calls it, "Long Distance Coding". WGO is disguised by some cool Coding that makes it look like part of the airport to anyone who isn't a Glitch or specifically invited by a Glitch. Come inside, I have so much to tell you!" Just like that, the two of us were walking through the grass towards WGO, having a normal conversation, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.