Unloaded Alarm

The three looked wide-eyed at the man with the gun. He saw the scared expressions on their faces and chuckled. "Oh don't be alarmed. I'm not going to shoot you or anything." But saying that caused Jean, Samantha, and Zack to be even more on edge, especially since the man had said that while fiddling with the gun in his hand.

The man saw that their faces and put the gun back down. "Sorry, I guess I shouldn't say that with a gun in my hand. As for why I have this, I enjoy collecting antiques. This gun was given to me by a friend. Don't worry, there are no bullets in this thing, nor do I have any bullets for it anyway," the man explained to the three.

"Isn't that thing illegal?" Zack asked the man suspiciously.

"Aaaaa... yes it is..." the man replied. He pursed his lips and said in a nonthreatening voice, "I'd be very grateful if you keep this a secret. I kind of forgot to put it away after tinkering with it yesterday night."

"And what about the other illegal things here?" Zack asked.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Zack pointed at the things he had told Jean and Samantha about before. The man pinched his eyes and sucked his teeth. "Ahhh... about that too... I gotta say, you have good eyes for a kid. I should probably put those away as well. But yeah, these were given to me by the same friend as well," the man explained.

"And who exactly is your friend?" Zack asked suspiciously.

The man scratched his chin and said, "I don't exactly know. He says he's a traveling merchant or something. He goes around the domes trading stuff from each one. I think he got these things from that scavenging dome. You know, the one called Seawaivers I think. If you don't believe me, he's coming by later this afternoon. You can ask him for yourself if you want," the man offered for Zack to see it for himself.

"Oh uh, I'll pass. I just wanted to know where you got that," Zack declined the man's offer.

"Good then. I don't know what misunderstandings you had but I'm glad that that is out of the way now. Now then, here is your order esteemed customers," the man said as he picked up the tray of food and walked over to their table, and placed it down. He then went back to the counter, picked up the pistol, and went back behind the door with it.

After the man had left, Jean looked to Zack and said, "It looks like your intuition was wrong. He got that gun from Dome Seawaivers."

"But it's still illegal isn't it?" He crossed his arms and said in a low voice, "Frankly, I don't really believe his story. His merchant friend should know that guns are not allowed here. Makes no sense for him to gift him one," Zack argued.

"Well, he did say that you can see for yourself in the afternoon," Jean pointed out what the man had said about meeting with this traveling merchant to see for themselves. She didn't have her keys on her currently and she didn't want to bother her father, and she wasn't in any rush to finish her homework since she always had tomorrow to do it. She might as well do something to kill time, and meeting with a traveling merchant who has been around the domes was pretty interesting in her opinion. But she wanted to hear her two friends' opinions on the matter first.

Zack considered what Jean said for a moment and replied, "Hm, I guess I could. I don't really have anything planned out today anyway." Both Jean and Samantha gave Zack a surprised yet confused expression. "What?" Zack asked them. "What are the weird looks for?"

"We're surprised you didn't say no," Samantha answered him. "Don't you hate being outside? I constantly hear you say that you would rather be home than anywhere else."

Zack shook his head like he was disappointed with the two and said, "Even I have times when I want to go outside."

"Wow, that's news to me," Samantha commented, which just made Zack sigh and shake his head again. Samantha crossed her arms and said, "Well, I guess that I could stay and see him too. A traveling merchant ay? He sounds like a fun guy to meet." Samantha turned to Jean and asked her, "What about you then? Are you gonna stay and meet him as well, or are you gonna go home and rest?"

Although Jean would rather go home and sleep, she really couldn't at the moment. "I mean, why not. If you two are going to stay and meet him, then I don't see why I shouldn't as well. Like Samantha said, he sounds like a rather interesting person."

"Okay, it looks like we're all staying behind to meet that guy," Samantha noted. "So, what do you guys want to do until then? Since afternoon is like a few hours away," Samantha asked.

"I guess we can... I actually don't know. Jean, do you have any idea what we can do till then?" Zack turned and asked her.

Jean thought about some things they could do until then and came up with one idea. "Why don't we go back to the laboratory?" she suggested to the two. Since her father worked there, she would visit him sometimes when he would occasionally not be busy and see what he was up to. Of course, they weren't going to go bother him since he was probably busy around this time doing whatever it is that he was doing, but she did know some of the people who worked there and had some clearance. They could go around and explore for a little bit. As long as they didn't touch anything they weren't supposed to, and bother anyone that was busy, they should be fine.

"That sounds like a good idea," Zack excitedly agreed. It was pretty obvious to Jean that he would like the suggestion since he was a huge fan of computers and technology. Samantha on the other hand looked somewhat reluctant about the idea.

"I mean, I guess we could, but is there really nothing else that we could choose to do?" she said with uncertainty. "The laboratory is a rather dangerous place. Are you sure we can just go around sightseeing?"

"I don't think they're going to allow us on the dangerous floors," Jean told Samantha. "So you don't have to worry about us getting blown up by accident or anything. We're just going to stick with the safer floors. Plus, we could always just check out the public floors instead." Jean assured Samantha that nothing bad will happen to them and purposed that they could go with the second option instead if she wanted.

Samantha shook her head and said, "Nah, let's just go with the first option. You and Zack have probably explored the public floors a hundred times already," she exaggerated. But it really wasn't that big of an exaggeration for Jean. She and her father frequently visited the public floors where the exhibits and presentations were. Jean would not be surprised if by now, she had actually visited the public floors of the laboratory over a hundred times.

"Alright then, looks like we are all agreeing on doing that," Zack stated. He then urged Jean and Samantha to finish eating their food quickly so that they could get going already. "Come on, the faster you guys finish eating, the faster we get there and the more time we have to check things out." He even threatened to eat their food for them if they didn't hurry. He was eager to see what went on the floors that were kept secret from the public. But his childish excitement was justified. After all, it wasn't every day that he could go exploring on the staff floors.

Jean was lucky that she could occasionally go and see what was going on with the floors. It was one of the perks of having parents that worked for I.C.E... or parent, singular now. She really missed her mother. She didn't know why those feelings were surfacing again after so long.

Jean closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. Zack and Samantha looked at her with confused expressions. "Is there something wrong girl?" Samantha asked her.

"Oh no, it's nothing," Jean told them.

"Are you sure? You know, if you're tired, you don't have to do this for us. You could always just go home," Samantha told her.

"No, it's really nothing," Jean assured her. After telling the two of her friends not to worry, Jean started eating her meal. She had ordered some kind of fried fish. All the bones were picked off and only the tender meat remained. The other thing that she ordered was coincidentally more fish. Maybe she should've looked at the names of the items she ordered instead of randomly picking them. But since it was already too late, she might as well just eat it since she couldn't just throw it away. She couldn't offer one of them to Zack or Samantha since she knew that both of them hated fish.

Anyhow, she did Zack a favor and finished her food quickly. After that, she went and asked for a glass of water while the two of them waited for Samantha to finish eating as well before calling the man back once again. "Hm, that was quite fast," he commented. They told the man that they were coming back in the afternoon to meet his traveling merchant friend to which he responded with, "Huh? You guys changed your mind? You wanna meet him now?"

"Yep," Zack replied. The man told the three when his friend was going to arrive and told them to come then.

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