Of Thorns and Lightning Page 2

  It killed Peter that he couldn't tell them.

  It killed him to know that they didn't know what was going to happen to them and that the promises they were making now might not mean anything.

  Their friendship would never be the same, all three of them would change more than they could have ever imagined.

  And the promises they made now would be reduced to absolutely nothing in a matter of moments, much faster than they could ever dream of saving them.

  Caught Red Handed

  "Since when did you become a pickpocket, Maize?"

  ♦️

  Peter had invited the pair of girls over to his apartment since it was his turn to host their study group. Maize and Meaghan went to the same school in Flushing, but Peter went to a different school near the center of Queens. Though they all had different teachers and different homework, it was more bearable, and the time passed faster when they were working together, though deep in thought and almost completely silent.

  Their silence was interrupted when there was a confident knocking at the door, causing them to all jump out of their seats.

  "You expecting anybody, Peter?"

  "Yeah, Aunt Malorie should be back from the store." He got up to open it for his aunt, poised and ready to grab a grocery bag, but the door swung open instead and his aunt wasn't alone. She was laughing with William Townsend, who had half the grocery bags and the keys in his hand. He had taken them from May and opened the door instead of waiting for Peter. Peter stepped back and let them in.

  "May! Why is William here?" He exclaimed.

  "Oh, I caught him in the parking lot, ready to head up here and he was a great help. He's a funny guy, Peter!"

  "Oh, I'm sure he is." Peter answered. He didn't expect William to already be here, he was supposed to come after the girls left. Ever since they guessed something was going on, Peter wanted to keep them far away from it. He had to.

  William helped May put away the groceries in the kitchen and Peter disappeared into his room, then into the kitchen. Everyone knew he was trying to hurry things along and keep his friends and Mr. Townsend on two separate timelines.

  "It's all on this flash drive, Mr. Townsend." Peter said covertly, handing

  Maize and Meaghan heard, their interests then piqued.

  "What's he getting into?" Maize wondered.

  "I don't know, maybe this is what he's been working so hard on." Meaghan suggested.

  "Maybe. But I doubt William Townsend would have a plucky teen from Queens work on anything for him, not even at Peter's level. William is even smarter than Peter, he's programmed and designed and created things I can't even fathom."

  They discussed while they were still alone in the room. May then suggested something that was exactly what Peter had wanted to avoid.

  "Why don't you all stay for dinner?" She asked pleasantly. William agreed seeing how Peter was rushing for him to leave. William figured out why, and it was because of the girls. He said he would love to stay for dinner.

  He helped Aunt Malorie cook and set the table, taking his sweet old time and making Peter twitch, making William smile smugly. Meanwhile, Maize wasn't acting completely like herself and was focused on other things, until she had her eyes locked on the prize she was looking for.

  "Is that the flash drive?" Maize said in a text to Meaghan and she lifted an eyebrow when she saw that her friend had read the message. Meaghan nodded her head sternly but subtly no. The message was absolutely clear to Maize, but her curiosity still was getting the better of her.

  "It's on Peter's dinosaur keychain. I can grab it."

  "We don't steal stuff! Don't even think about it, Maize. At least I respect Peter and his privacy more than that."

  "It's not stealing if we return it."

  "Who's this we?! This is on you, babes."

  "Who are you, Dike?!" She texted, and the conversation had to end due to dinner being ready. They all sat together; Maize next to Mr. Townsend on the long side of the rectangular table, Peter and Meaghan opposite them and May at the head of the table to William's left. Their conversation was awkward only because Peter didn't want this to be happening, but Maize and May were upbeat. Only Meaghan knew why Maize was so happy and was grumpy about it, not wanting her best friend to bring her down into some heavy trouble.

  After dinner, they all helped clear the table and load the dishes into the dishwasher. Meaghan didn't know Maize's plan, but soon figured it or when Maize had sneezed loudly and dropped all the silverware on the floor and made a scene. William bent down to help her clean up the mess, and it was all over in a few seconds. Maize and Meaghan made sure to leave before William so they could get far away from the house before anyone even noticed the flash drive was gone. They thanked Aunt Malorie for dinner, got their backpacks and left, Meaghan getting grumpier by the minute, not exactly knowing if her friend had robbed a millionaire.

  "I got the flash drive, Meaghan." Maize said, dangling it up in front of their faces as they were waiting for the subway back home. Meaghan was instantly angry, but also curious as to what Peter was working on with Mr. Townsend. Meaghan was bewildered.

  "How did you do that?! How did you get into his pocket without him noticing?"

  "The same way the robbers do it in the city here; distraction." She gloated. "Remember when I dropped all the silverware? It was at the same time William had his hands in his pockets. When he bent down to help me pick up the forks off the floor, he had pushed the keychain to the outside of his pocket when he took his hand out, and the end was dangling over the side. It happened by chance, but I got the timing perfect." She explained, sounding a little bit crazy.

  "There is nothing stopping me from taking that and running back to Peter with it. But I doubt there's anything really bad on there, probably just geek stuff. Still, you're the one who stole it, you're the one who's going to touch it- my fingerprints aren't getting on that- and you're the one who's going to return it to William Townsend himself without being caught. I hope to God you have a plan, Maize."

  She did, but she didn't have a backup plan. She didn't think of the things Peter may have done to the flash drive to protect it.

  It wasn't long before William realized he didn't have the flash drive. He searched for it endlessly until he really couldn't find it anywhere, them he contacted Peter the next day by showing up at his apartment.

  "Peter, I don't know what happened, but I don't have the flash drive anymore. I hope you coded it well, I don't know what you put on there and if it gets into the wrong hands-" William mentioned.

  "Don't worry, Mr. Townsend. I put a tracking device on it, let’s go see where it is." He said, waving William in and sitting down next to him on the couch with his laptop, the program pulled up. In a matter of seconds, Peter discovered where it was and it took him a moment to process before he apologized, told William not to worry and stormed out, heading to Flushing as fast as he could.

  Meaghan invited Maize to her house to investigate the drive the next day. Peter had made sure that her laptop had the top-notch virus protectant software installed and even though it didn't compare to his system, it was on a way higher level than it was when she bought it in the store. The flash drive was bound to work on her laptop. The processors could more than handle it, and she was right. Everything was going well until she hit a roadblock, a password entry box.

  Meaghan was concerned.

  "Do we know the password? No. Do I know what to do? Yes. I've seen Peter put in this administrator override code a thousand times. I sit there and watch him code for hours on end, sometimes. Even though I don't understand most of it at all, I know his system and his encryption style. See? We're in."

  Meaghan sat down next to Maize to get a better view of the documents displayed. It was mostly boring geek stuff they didn't understand, like Maize had predicted. Then, they ran into blueprints made by William for an Arachne suit of armor, but Peter wasn't Arachne, so it didn't seem important.

  The next file brought up was a
folder with information on something called "The Youngblood Project" but neither could get a single look at its contents due to an unexpected visitor bursting in her room.

  "Maize!" Peter barked, startling her and causing her to drop her apple onto her bedroom floor, knocking over her water bottle in the process. She slammed her laptop lid closed the instant she realized it was Peter.

  "Peter! Hi!" She greeted awkwardly, trying to gather herself. She could immediately tell Peter wasn't here for fun and he meant business. Her stomach dropped, knowing that he knew what she had done.

  "The flash drive." He commanded mercilessly. "I'm not leaving here without it, but you shouldn't even have it in the first place!"

  Maize tried to establish her cover story, and failed.

  "I needed a flash drive for my senior project, and this was on the counter in your house-"

  "Don't fucking lie to me! I gave that flash drive to William and you lifted it off him! You stole it! You invaded my privacy and broke my trust!" Peter yelled, feeling hurt and betrayed. Maize was silent, knowing his words rang true. She hung her head low as if she were a dog with his tail between his legs.

  Meaghan ejected it from the laptop and pulled it out, replacing the cover and handing it out to him. He snatched it up quicker than she could seemingly blink. He left wordlessly.

  This wasn't an argument.

  There was nothing to argue.

  Maize and Meaghan knew what they had done and how it hurt Peter. Heated silence hurt so much more, it seemed.

  Especially because Maize knew the destruction of her best relationship was caused by her own hand, because she got caught red handed.

  The Youngblood Project

  "You took something you're not even supposed to have in the first place!"

  ♦️

  "William, they know. They read the files." Peter admitted, his head in his hands and feeling as if part of this was his fault.

  "Okay. That's fine. There were a lot of code words and they didn't have it for long. We were going to take them after graduation, but we'll take them earlier. It's fine, Peter. It's not your fault, you just did what I asked. Don't worry about it, kid."

  ♦️

  "Peter won't talk to me, Meaghan." Maize spoke as they walked down the hallway of their high school.

  "Rightfully so. You took something that wasn't yours."

  "Yeah, tell me something I don't know. But I've called a million times with an apology, but he won't talk to me. We've always worked things out before."

  "This isn't like before. You know it. Now, go kill that debate. Don't let this impact your grade. We'll work it out together later." Meaghan assured, dropping her forlorn friend at her classroom.

  Maize walked into AP Government feeling dejected. She plunked her backpack down next to her seat and pulled out her notecards, studying the content before she was due to debate with one of her classmates.

  She was one of the first called and she still wasn't feeling confident all because of her mistake with Peter earlier in the week. Though, she stood up, cleared her throat, straightened her white button up blouse and went up to the podium. During the middle of her rebuttal, two men in suits looking like the secret service pulled aside her teacher. Maize still didn't stop speaking, keeping one eye on the ordeal by the door. Her teacher told her to wrap it up and she skipped to her conclusion, to the confusion of her classmates as the men allied towards her, prepared to take her out of class.

  "And let me remind you that there is no RSVP on the Statue of Liberty. Thank you." She concluded, actively being escorted. She grabbed her things, having too many questions running through her head to find the right one to ask. Maize looked at her phone since it kept pinging in her pocket, all of the messages from Meaghan vaguely explaining what had happened. Maize was still confused and starting to get concerned. She didn't know if she needed to start escaping the light but tense grip of the hands of the men.

  When they reached the front doors of the school, Maize saw the helicopter sitting in the parking lot, its blades blowing everything in sight. They followed her into the helicopter, making escaping at this point impossible. Meaghan was already there, looking excited while Maize looked terrified.

  "Can someone tell me where we're going?" Maize shouted into the headset, still unable to hear over the roar of the helicopter.

  "You've been selected for a special program and you will be briefed when we arrive." The stoic agent spoke. That didn't answer any of her questions. Her heart rate skyrocketed as they lifted off the ground, Maize completely uncomfortable with the situation. It didn't feel right. It was so out of the blue, seemingly not connected to anything until she remembered the contents of the flash drive. If this was the Youngblood Project, she didn't want it. It scared the hell out of her, and they had barely taken off.

  They had flown out of the city, deeper into New York. She didn't recognize any of her surroundings, not even as they got closer to the ground to land. Below them was an enormous white building enclosed by endless acres of immaculately landscaped lawn and forest. The helicopter landed and both the girls grabbed their things, being sternly escorted out towards the main entrance where William Townsend was waiting.

  "William, what's this all about?! I was in the middle of giving a speech in class for one of my final grades of the quarter, but I was actively removed. I have homework due this week that's not going to do itself, Mr. Townsend. This really should be important, sir." She asked, then wriggling out of the grip of the agents.

  "Where do you think I'm going, guys?! Nowhere! Is the grip really necessary? Please get your hands off of me, I don't want to be touched." She requested and they complied, still standing attentive.

  "Come on inside, ladies. You were promised a briefing and you're going to get one. Follow me." William said, getting right down to business. They followed him, Meaghan trying to look around the entire place, taking it all in at once. William swiped them into the conference room where it was then just the three of them.

  "Take a seat, girls. We have a lot to discuss here." William began, sliding two file folders across the extensive mahogany table.

  "Welcome to the Youngblood Project. This plan was put in place by the Gods for the security of the future without them. We've carefully selected the replacement for each member after years of searching and vetting. Our rigid criteria left us with the results of exactly who was destined to be a God. Maize, you fit to the profile of Thor, the god of Thunder, and Meaghan, we've determined that you embody Dike, the Greek goddess of justice, moral order and judgement. This is final, no switches or take-backs. Go read the rest of the file and then you have to sign about a million pages of stuff."

  "Yeah, and then we can go home, right?" The girls wondered since no one knew the premises of the project and what their terms were.

  "Sure. To get all your things. Listen, your parents have already been informed and agreed on this."

  "Since when?! What about college? I'm going to NYU and she's going to Syracuse, as full-time students! We can't stay here that whole time, and we'll have to lug our dorm stuff back and forth." Meaghan realized.

  "That's not what I'm worried about! I'm worried about finishing out the year and walking at graduation, as well as being forcibly removed from my home to be an unwilling participant in a project-" Maize objected.

  "For the greater good. You don't have much of a choice in this." William interrupted.

  "For the greater good? How?"

  "This is cute because you're his replacement, but Thor is always saying do what is right, not what is easy. I can promise you this isn't going to be easy, but it will work, and it's the right thing to do if you like it or not. I wish it just wasn't like this since it startled every one of the other initiates and they had exactly the same response as you girls. Unfortunately, there is no better way to do this, and we've went through them all. I'm sorry. If you want a lawyer to help you read over the papers you have to sign, I can call one in easily. Let's get started." William e
xplained. Meaghan and Maize were still uneasy, and they called for the lawyer to help them better understand the wording and the meaning of everything they were currently agreeing to. About two hours later, the paperwork was complete. They were Gods in Training.

  William had presented the girls with their identification cards that unlocked the doors for them and gave them access to everything. Meaghan was reveling at her picture since she said she looked amazing, but Maize was displaying a straight face with no smile, just a smize to the camera with her eyes. She was neither satisfied or dissatisfied with her picture; she had much bigger problems at hand than how she looked on her ID card, not with everything going on around her and changing before her very eyes.

  "When you're ready, Artemis will give you the tour." William said, leaving them in a comfortable living room to relax and process everything so far. Maize and Meaghan didn't talk to each other. The only words spoken were from Meaghan who said she was ready for the tour about a half an hour later. Maize reluctantly followed her lead. She didn't think she was ready yet, but then again, she might never have been ready.