Dropping the whole "I left my parents to die," was a great thought to enter a family dinner upon with your parents. While my mom hugged me after not seeing me for a while, I was pretty lost on what to think. My father was the problem. Even Momma Emma said so. I needed to change the way he thought or take more drastic measures.

Still, I wasn't sure how a twelve-year-old girl was supposed to change the mind of a staunch believer in the philosophy of wealth and diligence.

The mid-term exams were over, and I managed to pass most of them with C's (hey I was out for a while and C's get degrees). I was formally let off the team by Coach Beckham, which I expected considering I was in a coma for a while and missed too much. Either way, it was one less commitment I had to follow through on. Now that school was out of the way and I didn't risk getting left back, I returned with Ash back to the hive for stage seven.

For two weeks while studying for midterms, we didn't talk about our families or the initiation. Ash was my tutor, and I was focused on catching up on school. Whenever we had free time, we'd head to the hot tub to see the sunset, knock down some pins in the basement bowling alley, or watch a new film that was released in theaters in my family's private movie theater. A couple of days, when the weather got warm enough for us to go out and play some tennis, Ash suffered a terrifying defeat by my hands. I was pretty sure he felt that hitting it outside the green box was the way to win. I didn't tell him until the last set when he looked up at the automated score tracker and saw he was getting demolished. His face looked like a child who saw a lump of coal in his stocking. I fell down on the court and laughed.

The two-week break came and went. Business was about to resume. My father emailed us warning of more contracts coming in. I was dreading receiving them. I couldn't continue going through with them, except perhaps the one for the Mayor. And even that one would be controversial.

It was on the bus ride to Royden that I asked Ash how his father had become Swarmmaster.

Ash was almost silenced by the question. The boy used to idolize the Locusts and his father when I first met him about a month ago. Now, he shied away from the topic.

"It was after my mother's death. Before that, he was a police officer. My mom was on the city council. She proposed a bill to raise taxes on the rich and redistribute the funds towards education and healthcare. That wasn't the spark. It was the Anti-Criminal Organization bill that probably tipped the glass over."

"I've heard about it," I recalled my father mentioning the disgraced bill in conversation once. Apparently, it would call for the National Guard and FBI to replace police authority in the handling of gang activity since the police department was vastly corrupt. And if Ash's father was a police officer, then his wife probably heard of the department's corruption firsthand through her husband. Plus, my father did pay a lot of cops to look the other way, so the councilwoman wasn't off.

"When she died at the suspected hands of a Reaper member, my father personally took the case to find the culprit. But after a year of dead ends, the department dropped the case, and it pissed my father off. He joined the Locusts and for six years, rose through the ranks until, making his way to becoming close friends with the Swarmmaster before him: Swarmmaster Nile."

Swarmmaster Nile wasn't an unfamiliar name. My family knew he was the leader of the Locusts, unlike today where the Mayor's position is still kept under wraps. Choosing not to let my father in on that information was crucial because if that was the case, Ash would be parentless by now.

The bus stopped at Royden and we got off and made our way to the hive's entrance. On the way down, Ash continued telling me how his father, upon receiving the Swarmmaster mantle, launched a late entry into the mayoral race. He won on his campaign to end corruption, redesign the flawed system of Chicago's local government, and restore balance to the city. Now he felt he had legitimacy both in the underworld and the political world.

If my father had his way, that legitimacy wouldn't be for long.

I wanted to tell Ash about the contract. I wanted to let him know that my family would be targeting his father, and worse, that I would deliver the fatal blow. I stumbled upon the words. I couldn't admit to my best friend that I was planning on killing his father. Yet, what kind of best friend wouldn't at least warn him of the events to come?

I was saved telling him the truth when Auntie appeared. If she overheard the plan on her brother-in-law, it'd be my head. I kept my mouth shut. I'd tell Ash some other time.

After Ash was done hugging his Auntie, she gave me her usually stank face as if Ash just towed a trash barge with him into the hive. "You here for the next stage?"

I nodded. Auntie scrunched her nose and waved for us to follow her. She led us back to the tattoo parlor where I saw five members sitting at desks and writing names on pieces of paper. I wanted to warn them to write names of people they hated instead, but even that would be cruel. Not even my enemies deserved the torture Ash received.

Auntie led us to a back room where a couple of chairs were set up facing a white wall. A projector was suspended overhead like the inside of an underfunded classroom who couldn't afford virtual holograms and tablets for the students to view the content from the comfort of their own desk—glasses optional.

She pulled up an old computer and started it up with a heavenly chime. She went to a folder labeled "RESCUE" and clicked on it.

"Stage seven," she explained, "usually involves one of two actions. Recruit or Rescue. Ash here completed this stage by recruiting you into our gang."

Ash gave me a smile and then focused back on what was projected on the wall.

"But I ain't down with one of your friends joining my gang. One of you is enough. You will be rescuing instead."

That was fine. It's not like I had a lot of friends dying to join a gang anyway—partly because I didn't have a lot of friends to begin with (sad face).

"We are searching for this woman," Auntie pulled up a photo of a black woman in the LSD olive and black uniform. She was wearing her olive colors and holding an assault rifle. She had eczema all over her face, but other than that she didn't look bad. She had the coolest afro that brought me back to the images in my history textbook of the disco generation.

"Her name is Jazz. She was on an undercover mission investigating a local suburb where minorities and poor people were being relocated to as a way to foster 'developmental skills for them to establish their presence in the middle-class.' Run by the Sower Foundation, it provides housing and job training in a newly created suburb an hour west of Chicago called Cosecha Meadows. However, some have yet to be seen graduating from the program which started about two years ago."

Images of the suburb with similar family houses, cul-de-sacs, mowed lawns, and trees appeared on the wall. Then the images transitioned to the front gates of the community where it was guarded by two officers in booths. It was a gated community.

"We heard some rumors and complaints of people disappearing. One sanitation worker who worked for the community alerted one of our field members that shady stuff was going on inside the community. He was due to meet us at a secure site to tell us more, but he disappeared, and his body was found smashed in a landfill."

Smashed? I gulped. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

"We also got tipped off by a reporter who was investigating the community and apparently asking too many questions. Her body was found dumped in Lake Michigan with stones tied to her body."

I had a coughing fit. Auntie stopped talking and placed her fists on her hips waiting for me to stop. "Die quietly please," she said as she continued with her briefing.

I apologized, but I was freaking out. Those were two simple contracts I had received in the midst of Ash's recovery from his injuries after stage four...those two contacts were them. I had killed them.

"As you can see, we don't know much about what's going on inside. Hence, we needed to find a way in. We tasked Jazz with the mission to pretend to be homeless so she can get approached by the social workers who do outreach for the foundation. Last time we chatted with her, she was on a bus to Cosecha when we lost contact."

An image of a house number appeared alongside an address. The house number was 324. "This is the house number she was supposed to be moved into. Your task is to get in, find her, and break her out. Get her back over here safely."

I raised the most obvious point that Auntie failed to touch upon. "And if she isn't alive?"

Auntie pinched her nose as if the thought of Jazz's death was an annoyance. "If she's dead, then bring the body. We can run an autopsy to find the cause of death, unlock the truth behind this community, and have evidence to bring them down. Any questions?"

Ash didn't even raise his hand. "I'm going with her."

"No!" Auntie and I said at the same time and then looked at each other.

"Honey," Auntie said. "You completed your stage seven. You only need stage eight to finish the initiation." Her voice soured, "And you've suffered enough on her behalf already."

"The way I see it," Ash growled, "I suffered by your gang members' hands, not by hers. It was dad and his men who beat me to a pulp and our own hive members that had me eating blended food for a week."

"All because of her," Auntie pointed at me as if I was the plague. "She's nothing but trouble. I regret allowing her into my hive."

Well now that was obvious. She thought she could either wrap me around her philosophy or have me killed along the way through the initiation process. Both so far had failed.

"She can't do this alone. You're talking about extracting a person dead or alive alone from a hostile community with no backup? This is a suicide mission and you know it. I'm going with her."

Auntie bit her lip and slammed her fist into the palm of her other hand. "Boy you're trying my patience. If you die your father will have my ass."

"If I die it'll be because of both of you, not because of her." Ash raised his voice. He stood up and grabbed my hand. "Come on Zay, we're leaving."

"Ash," I muttered. He yanked my hand and I refused to move. Ash stopped tugging and turned to face me.

"Zay, let's go," he said, almost pleading. I hated when he pulled his baby eyes on me.

"Ash, this isn't your mission. You don't have to suffer on my behalf anymore. Just let me handle this myself."

Ash took after his Auntie and crossed his arms, while planting his foot on the ground. "What kind of best friend would I be to allow you to do this crazy mission alone?" Then he unfolded his arm and approached me. Within seconds he flipped me over and had me pinned down on the ground.

That took me by surprise.

I tried to break free, but if I struggled, I'd separate my own shoulder.

"Remember who got the jump on you when you first came here Zay," Ash said. "Remember who saved your life from splattering on the ground. You need me on that mission. Stop treating me like a baby already."

He let go of my arm. I got up and shoved him. "I'm not treating you like a baby. I'm treating you like my friend. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"And you think I don't want the same?" he looked over his shoulder. "Let's stop arguing already and help each other to finish this rescue fast. The two of us together can do anything. Why risk separating from one another when together we're amazing?"

I had no knowledge of the extent of Ash's fighting and infiltration abilities, other than he took down three trained guards in that high rise, saved my life by scaling that same high rise, and took more beatings than I could imagine.

And here he was still standing.

I sighed. "Fine, but if you die or bail on me, I'll murder you in the afterlife."

Ash came up to me and poked me on the nose. "You'll have to be better than me first."