Sam almost never got up before eleven o'clock in the morning on a weekend. This was because she had to get up at six on school days to get ready and catch the bus, and she figured that the time which she got up had to come at least close to doubling. So if school days ever happened to mean getting up at seven, Sam most certainly would have plans of sleeping in until two in the afternoon on weekends.

The one exception was when she was walking in to meet up with Diana and Shane. On those days, she forced herself up just before nine so she could start on her trip to meet them. She would always tell Mom and Dad the night before that she would be heading out early. That way she wouldn't need to worry about being up before them. If she had to get one of them up to tell them she was going out, they would be grouchy and might say that she couldn't go after all.

Grabbing a bagel to eat on her walk, Sam made sure not to slam the door behind herself on the way out. That took a bit of caution, seeing as the door was prone to slamming. Someone told Sam a couple weeks ago that the new city layout would have condo and apartment-type of buildings instead of individual houses, and that the doors would be sliding. Sam couldn't recall who it had been that said that... Except whoever it was had been planning on moving into one of the new residential areas as soon as the construction was complete.

Looking around at the houses near her, and back at her family's own light green house, Sam couldn't help but scowl at the thought of what the new cities would be. Sure, they were efficient, but that didn't mean that it was worth it to squish out every bit of individuality from the buildings. There was no fun about walking around a city that looked like a mold had been repeated along every street.

The entire plans for the new city layout had been released about a year before construction began, and the most populated cities from every state in the country would be "updated". Unfortunately for Sam's ability to put up so much as a lawn decoration, Drestian (soon to be known as theta forty-two) was one of those cities.

Luckily, national holidays were exceptions to the rule that was basically to always be boring. Sam probably would have single handedly started a protest if Christmas lights weren't allowed.

Besides, her family wouldn't be moving to the new blocks for a while. A lot of people were keen to move right off the bat, seeing as the city offered a substantial incentive. They said that the old houses would be bought for full value by the city and the new living spaces would be less expensive than they probably should be to buy or rent. However, there were lists depending on when each building would be ready to move into. Sam convinced her parents to put it off until one of the later moves, though they seemed to be all for the change.

Whatever.

Almost to the center of town, Sam checked that neither a speeding car nor runaway construction vehicle would crush her to a pulp as she crossed the street. Across the road was a small bookstore, which almost never had anything worth reading in it (all historical fiction and romance novels, ew). However, it was in nearly the exact center of town, or at least it had been before all the construction began, so it was Sam, Diana, and Shane's meeting point.

"The others are in the loft, dear."

Sam looked to the side as soon as she came in the door, smiling to the elderly woman standing behind the store's checkout counter.

The woman, Mrs. Penelope, was as sweet as she was old. That meant something when it was obvious from her grey hair and abundant wrinkles that she had to be at least eighty. Still, she was at the little book store every day but Sunday and let the kids use the store's loft to meet in.

Sam was somewhat surprised that Shane had never gotten them kicked out, but he hadn't. They had been meeting up at the little store for almost two years now, and Mrs. Penelope still waved hello and let them into her store every time they wanted to be there. Diana sometimes would buy one of the dusty old books from the shelves of the room, though Sam had a theory that was probably out of pity.

The store hadn't closed down, though through all of the times she had been there, Sam had only seen actual customers a total of maybe fifteen times. She was glad it was still there, for even though the books were nothing that Sam would be reading, the store was nice and tiny and she always felt like she could stay there for ages. The loft was even better.

Waving back to Mrs. Penelope, Sam crossed through the rows of shelves and made her way back to the ladder. Though it looked a bit teetering, the rungs of the steps had never given out yet, so Sam hurried up to the crawlspace above.

"Sam, thank god you're here. I thought that Shane was going to talk me to death."

Diana was seated comfortably in one corner of the little room, and looked nowhere near dying. Shane, meanwhile, had changed from sitting on a cushion to leaning forward, staring at Sam and Diana intently.

Sam groaned. "Shane, dude, what's you deal?"

"I'm just waiting."

Now Diana butted in. "Waiting for what? Us to transform into glittering dragons? You look like you're searching for the answers to the universe in Sam's left cheekbone."

Shane let out a huff at that and leaned back again, muttering something along the lines of "maybe the answers to the universe are in her cheekbone".

The loft was far too small for Shane, as he was a good foot taller than either Sam or Diana, so he smacked the back of his head on the ceiling. The place was build to house storage, not a trio of teenagers, so the area was low and wide. It worked out, though.

Instead of heading off immediately, Sam let Diana finish what she had been trying to read on the screen in front of her. Shane had been talking her ears off and so she couldn't actually finish reading it. Sam crawled forward so she could get a look at Diana's phone's screen. It was a news article.

"Oh, come on Di, that's boring. Let's go walk, and you can read your newspaper later," Sam told her, rolling her eyes at the article. Diana was one to be interested by news articles and history books, but Sam and Shane definitely were not.

"No, it's interesting. Look." Diana scrolled back up to the top of the page, turning the phone around so that Sam could read the title. "Genetic Warfare: Not Possible, Inevitable."

Sam sighed. "A conspiracy theory, it's nonsense."

"Things are only conspiracy theories if they aren't real. This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's a conspiracy."

"No, Di, it's all just made up. If it were real, we would hear about it."

Diana scoffed at that and typed something else into her phone, tossing it to Sam a moment later. "Not if the government didn't want us to hear about it. We're too busy working on things over here to worry about Europe or anywhere else."

The screen of Diana's phone had a list of links to articles now, all entitled "New government project!" followed by the name of something. Sam just shook her head. This was complete bogus. No one would believe this stuff except for maybe Diana.

"You mean like the counterparts thing?"

Diana and Sam both turned from the screen to look over at Shane. He was frowning, like he was thinking quite hard about something. He had a very distinct expression like someone had drawn a "v" on his forehead and his eyebrows traced it.

"Yeah, like that. See, Sam? They're just distracting you from the big deal," Diana said, nodding in affirmation to Shane.

Sam shook her head again. "The big deal being genetic warfare? I think maybe you're making this a bigger deal than it is."

"You should look at the facts before you say that, Sammy."

Sam hummed. Diana was just off on some wild goose chase to find the end of the world, but maybe she was right. Not about the actual warfare thing, but that she should look into the facts. The facts that Sam would be looking into, though, would be more around what type of information had been handed over to this new "Counterparts Program" thing.

After all, she could be jumping the shark. Maybe the match had been made just from her school grades or her bit of a criminal record. Speaking of jumping the shark...

"Di, just drop it. You sound like you should be standing on a street corner with a picket sign-'The end of the world is nigh!' and all that."

This time Diana shook her head. "I'll send you some links later. I think you'll get it if you just read them."

Instead of arguing back, Sam changed the subject. "Yeah, whatever. Ready to head out?"

They left a few minutes later, and not another word was spoken about the Counterparts Program or the things that Diana thought it was distracting from. Instead, they complained about their constantly-angry history teacher and tried to avoid getting kicked out of the construction zones they cut through.

The history teacher bit combined with the construction part when they discovered that none of the workers generally ever looked over at the bits of their projects that they were not assigned to. The thing about Mr. Ronan was that he was about as tall as temper was. He had to be almost seven feet high. So, when Shane found that sneaking into the middle of a skeleton of one of the buildings was very possible, it took them less than five minutes to get in.

Apart from the metal framework, the particular building that they hid inside of had a few sheets of heavyweight plastic-fabric stuff hanging down. Diana and Sam were quick to find a place where they couldn't be easily seen, even if a worker were to peek in. Shane didn't seem to have a problem with getting caught, jumping up to grab a low-hanging bar and pulling himself up on top of it. Once there, he stuck his chest out and began a theatrical impression of Ronan.

"Now, there! Children of imbeciles and people with odd-shaped heads, please remember that this is my classroom and you are not me. If I ask you to turn in your work, you do it." And if that wasn't the worst imitation of a British accent that Sam had ever heard, then she was Gandhi. Mr. Ronan wasn't even British.

Shane only came close to falling down once during the rest of his charade. After a moment, he turned around and pretended to shuffle through something on the beam next to him. "Oh, look at that. The papers are right here. It couldn't be my fault that I lost them, so I blame you!"

Sam rolled her eyes, and Diana grabbed a handful of sand from the dusty ground to throw at Shane. He was right enough in his impersonation, given that Mr. Ronan would one hundred percent definitely do that, but he was still an idiot. Both girls ran to the side and away from where they had been standing when the sand that Diana threw into the air blew back down into their faces.

"Serves you right, don't be a jerk and throw stuff at me," Shane called down from his perch.

Diana's first reaction was to throw more sand and a certain less-that-polite sign at him, and her second was to run around to a different part of the scaffolding to a place where she could pull herself up. Sam stayed where she was, not willing to get dragged into this again. She just backed a few feet to get a better look when she heard Shane curse under his breath, something smack into a metal pole, then him curse even more.

No one fell from the scaffolding, though, so Sam shook her head while Shane rubbed his arm where Diana pushed him into the pole. One of them would eventually fall if they didn't get down, but it was only a few feet of a drop. Well, maybe five. Or six.

"We should keep going. They'll notice us sooner or later if we don't move," Sam called up, keeping her voice as quiet as she could.

Shane shook his head, crouching down to offer a hand to Sam. "How about you come up instead? We can walk through the rest of the cage up here and no one will see. We can get down when we get to the end."

Sam groaned when Diana sided with Shane.

"Yeah," she said, copying Shane and offering a hand to Sam. "We're probably less likely to get caught like that than trying to sneak back out."

Even though she finally sighed and agreed to their incredibly stupid plan, Sam scowled at their hands and pulled herself up without their help, using her feet to push against one of the vertical poles. Diana hurried them off towards the park as soon as she was up, nodding towards a construction worker that was getting dangerously close to looking up at them.

With no more sheets of anything to block them from view, the three had to hurry across the beams, careful not to fall but also careful not to go too slow. They came close to being caught a few times, but none of the teens emerged from the construction zone in handcuffs. Instead, they came from a different building entirely, climbing across a plank that was lying between two different buildings in the construction zone to cross the gap.

They were only a few minutes from the park when they finished, and Diana grabbed Sam's hand for the rest of the walk. Shane made a gagging noise and Sam kicked him in the shin. He stopped being a brat after that, Diana didn't talk about the genetic wars and the end of the world, and Sam didn't bring up the Counterparts Program, so the walk was peaceful.

Those three qualification were the only way that their trip could be peaceful, after all, because any one of them breaking their unofficial rule would make at least one of the others want to argue with them. In the case of Shane being an asshat, it would make both Sam and Diana try to kick him again.

But the rules weren't broken and the walk continued, and by the time that they got back from walking and then heading to one of the town's cheaper restaurants to spend the change in their pockets on a quick lunch, it was dinnertime. Shane broke off from the group to head back to his house, and then Diana and Sam walked the rest of the way to their neighborhood. They said goodbye at a break that was about a half mile from each of their houses, on opposite sides of the neighborhood.

Sam still found herself looking around nervously before Diana kissed her on the cheek to say goodnight. They would see each other at school the next day and pretend that they were nothing more than best friends, and hope to everything above that Shane had the tact to not tell anyone. Maybe one day the worry about this would go away.

As Sam walked the rest of the way back to her house, she tried to figure out whether she was looking forward to the meeting with the people from the program or not. She finally decided that she was, for two reasons: one, maybe having a "counterpart" who was not a criminal and instead someone that her mom would like would convince her parents that she could be trusted. Two, she would see how much they knew. That was one thing that Sam just couldn't get out of her mind-the question of what this Counterparts Program was and why, what, and how they knew about her.