Plan and Motion

"I hate this plan of yours," Shia told Ran through the headset while looking through her binoculars to the building opposite to her. She sat on a tree.

The place is so far away from the people that even the building isn't even completed construction. Only the stairs, the floorboards, and some walls were there, not even properly done.

"Yeah. But you still agreed to it." Ran said.

"It's not like there was much of an option. But I have this question, why did you tell the other two about it if you aren't going to let them do anything?"

"Unlike Kaia, who's a nineteen-year-old in spirit and mind, in a thirteen-year-old's body, those two are actual thirteen-year-olds. I don't want to put them at any more risk than they already are in."

"Ok. I got that." Shia leaned back. "But then why tell them everything?"

"Picture yourself in their shoes. They know enough to be confused, and leaving them like that isn't going to help them in any way. Plus, they can be our witnesses if anything happens to us."

"That sounds cruel." Max finally spoke up. "Why didn't you just send bodyguards with her? It's not necessary to let her get kidnapped. What if something goes wrong?"

"With Kaia there do you think she'll let her get hurt?" Ran laughed.

"Honestly Kaia would rather set herself on fire than let anyone get hurt, especially not Caitlyn. She almost attacked you when you suggested that Caitlyn should get kidnapped. It was so funny." They could hear the smile in her voice.

"Yeah. But she is scary. Sometimes you can't figure out what she's thinking." Dor said, entering the car.

"Other times she's a little too predictable." Max continued, a little smile in his lips. He is outside the building, in a van full of high-tech computers.

"Shhh. They're here."

"I'm on my way. Max, check the cameras and wait for my signal."

"Why am I on this duty? I should be out there."

"You're the most reliable person we have on the computers right now. Anyway, I also know how you can get. Shia's the only sane one amongst us and you can't deny that."

"I doubt that knowing how to use the different military-style techniques in fighting at the age of fifteen is even remotely normal," Shia spoke while climbing down the tree, creeping to the building as a car pulled over dragging Kaia and Caitlyn with them.

"That's true but you are the sanest among the five of us. Are they there?" Max asked, typing away on the computers.

"We better pray those two don't become anything like us. They just entered the building, Kaia is so close to biting the man just to the left of her."

"Hopefully they don't. I'm here. Please don't bite him, Kaia. We need them to turn on the feed and make their demands."

"This is so risky. What happened to your bodyguards? Or those other people from before?" Max asked, tapping away and turning the cameras they installed the night before, on. The screens came to life as the men entered the building.

"You're complaining now? Dad is doing something with them. It's so top secret he doesn't even want me to know what it is. We don't have time to wait." He whispered as he slowly snuck up the stairs, meeting up with Shia who had weapons strapped onto her. "Are you looking at the feed, Max?"

"Yeah. Kaia said that they will broadcast it all over the world and demand the ransom then. Her parents will try to negotiate and then 'agree'. But after getting the money, they'll 'accidentally' set her on fire. Then blow up the building to erase any trace to them. It's such an elaborate plan for something so simple."

"They're actors. Sometimes you've just gotta go out with a bang."

"People like them make me sick." Shia pulled Dorran behind a pillar just as a man walked out of the room.

"Should we kill him?" Shia asked in sign language.

"No. We can't draw attention to ourselves just yet." Dor signed back.

"Yeah. They make all the mistakes and their children have to fix it. Stupid a-" His monitor became static and he saw men in masks holding Caitlyn to the camera. "They're starting. Where are you guys? Three of them just took Kaia to another floor. What are they planning? If we're lucky then she's with the one with the bomb."

"We need to get as close to them as we can. I'll go for Caitlyn and Dorran will go for Kaia." Shia whispered as Ran gave her a thumbs up.

"You guys are extremely lucky that they chose the floors with the most stuff on it. It'll be tricky getting up the stairs though." He scanned the room with the cameras. There were empty buckets of paint, piles of wood stacked on top of each other, and even iron rods scattered all around with strips of electrical wires.

The unfinished building had no walls to block them from the outside environment. The men entered a door entrance with no doors and just pillars around them.

"I'll tell you when and where to go, ok? Where are you guys?"

"Just behind the pillar, they are further in front of."

"Ok. When I tell you to, enter through the unfinished door and sneak to your left. There will be piles of wood, probably supposed to be used for the construction of the building, that's just in front of the stairs, you can hide behind there. Ok?"

Max stared at the screen intensely, there were around ten of them there, six with Caitlyn and the other four with Kaia. They set up a camera and have two laptops on each floor. Two of them were working on the computers, while the other two made their threats and demands. The rest of them just walked around the room and some of them were teasing Kaia, pulling at her hair and her clothes. She did a good job of not showing any emotions because he felt his blood boil seeing them.

Then the man's phone rang and they started their negotiations, drawing everyone's attention to the phone call on loudspeaker. Even that was being broadcasted.

Damn. They really want to make a scene.

"Go now while everyone is drooling over the amount of money they're going to get." Max didn't want to turn his attention away from Kaia but he had to.

The moment they got the money transferred he would have to take over their broadcast with the video they made of Caitlyn burning. He spent three weeks on that, having to take breaks for his own sanity's sake.

Listening to Caitlyn's screams, though fake, and seeing what he's creating didn't help him anyway. But Kaia would visit him regularly, helping him wherever he needed.

She relived that memory all over again several times so that they can replicate it properly.

"It must be really difficult for you. How are you doing?" He asked her.

"I'm fine. As long as we can prevent this from happening, I don't mind. What about you?"

"I'm fine too. More or less. Let's go for cakes when we're done with this, ok?"

"Promise?"

"Yup."

"I can't mess up now. I need to concentrate." He stared at the screen while his hands stayed on the keyboard and mouse.

Shia pulled out a gun and loaded it with bullets. She gave another one to Ran, who grinned taking it from her.

"You've used it before right?" She signed.

"Nope. But I've shot catapults before, I'll just treat it like that." He signed back at her, a little too confident for her liking.

"What?! No, you can't j-"

"Now!" Max shouted in their ears. "I'm blocking the signal from them and replacing it with the video. Hurry, only seconds before they real-"

"Hey! What's going on? I was just about to pour gasoline on the girl." One man shouted.

"I don't know. Something is jamming our signal. I don't un-"

They heard a loud 'bang' and the man standing next Caitlyn collapsed to the ground. Ran was standing from their hiding place gun in hand, excitement danced in his eyes.

"Idiot!"

Shia could shoot at the man with the gasoline and the guy at the computer before they started shooting at them. They ducked down again.

"Why did you shoot that man first?! You should have taken out the one on the computer. If they manage to undo what Max did then what's the point?" Shia shouted at Ran.

"Sorry. I was aiming for the camera, hitting the man was a bonus."

"It's fine. Know who to focus on. I'll cover for you." Shia held her gun to her chest, breathing heavily.

"Ok. I got it."

Amid all the shooting, they heard a man shout in pain. Shia peaked out and saw the man slam Caitlyn into the rough concrete ground, about to shoot her.

Without thinking, she aimed her gun and shot the man dead, getting shot in the arm.

"Caitlyn." Shia ran to her, Ran covered for her, shooting another man down.

She pulled her to the back of a pillar, gripping onto her arm and shot at the other two men.

Half of Caitlyn's face was scraped off and bits of her skin barely clinging to her flesh, from the time the man flung her to the rough ground.

Ran used the opportunity to run up the stairs behind him to Kaia. Two men lay a bloodied mess on the ground. Kaia was standing with her arms raised. She smiled and waved at Ran as he entered.

"Wow. Guess I'm not really needed?" Dor joked. "Isn't it a little too easy though, Kaia?"

"Nobody move!"

"I knew it."

♣

"Shia. You're bleeding." Caitlyn pointed to her arm, unable to open her other eye.

"You should be worrying about yourself. Why did you attack that man? You should have run for cover!"

"You also shouldn't have stood up and shot the man, getting shot yourself." Caitlyn laughed.

"Guess we're just the same." Shia laughed with her.

"I'm just wondering this, how's Kaia? She's been having little panic attacks all the way up here."

"Why would she- She died by falling off a building right? Shoot. How did we forget that? Stay here."

Shia walked out from behind the pillar, she gun was out of bullets. Bodies strewed all around over the floor as she claimed the stairs, just then, a man shouted.

"Nobody move! We installed bombs here and I have this switch. Come close to us and I'll kill everyone. Hey, hurry up, we just have to confirm that we killed her otherwise we won't get the rest of the money." He said to the other man still on the computers.

"Kaia. Are you ok?" Dor asked his arms raised in surrender.

"What the hell is going on? Is someone hacking into my computer?" The man frantically tapped, trying everything he could.

Kaia turned to face him and shrugged her shoulders, making eye contact with Shia. They both nodded and Kaia turned her attention back to Ran.

"We have to distract him." She signed at him.

"Hey! Eyes here. What are you communicating with each other?" The man shouted, looking crazier with every movement. He held his finger on the switch button and the other held a gun.

"Oh, nothing really. Just my friend and I were thinking about what you could possibly want with that much money. It is a lot- No way." He stared past him, a shocked look on his face. There were only trees and the sky behind him, also a fifty feet drop if they fell off the edge.

"What?" The man turned around, just as Shia jumped out, grabbed the nearest gun, and shot him in the shoulder. The man reflectively shot at them when the bullet entered his shoulder.

The man dropped his gun and quickly threw the switch to his friend as Ran grabbed the gunshot another one through his head.

Kaia ran to the man the moment he grabbed the switch and kicked it out of his hands. She grabbed the switch and threw it to Shia, who caught it effortlessly.

She then kicked him on the stomach, making him lose his balance as he fell from the edge.

Caitlyn clutched her face with a cloth as she made her way up the stairs.

She made eye contact with Kaia just as the wire from the man's computer tightened around her ankle and smacked her onto the floor, dragging her down with him.

"Kaia!"

Ran held onto her hand as she dangled off the edge, the man clung to those wires twisted around Kaia's ankles.

Dorran was close to falling himself as he held her as tightly as he could, with no other support to cling to.

Caitlyn and Shia appeared beside him and tried to pull her up but the man was too heavy and they started to get dragged down.

Kaia looked at the three of them.

Caitlyn's face needs to be treated and why does Dorran look like he's so much in pain? I lived more with all of them in the past year than in those nineteen years. I'm really grateful.

It's time they live now without me.

"Thank you." Kaia croaked out, smiling at them.

Dorran smiled back at her as her hand slipped out of his own bloodied one and she went crashing down again.

January 29: Caitlyn's birthday! She's turning fourteen! I saw Caitlyn burn to death on the big screen. I will never be able to get her screams and crying out of my head. X

February 12: I read in the news today that a kid about the age of fifteen named Dorran died when a chandelier fell on him. Why do kids keep dying? Why does everyone keep dying? Why?" X