Chapter 29

It's Monday morning. Even after everything that has happened, Jean was back in school, sitting with her cheeks pressed against her hand. Samantha and Zack have yet to arrive in their first class, and she was sitting by herself.

Yesterday, she had gone over to Jackson's apartment to further ask about the things he said, but Jackson apologized to her, saying that he couldn't talk with her at the moment since he was very busy. He was sorry about breaking his promise, but he assured her that once he had the time to again, he would tell her more about it. Well, it was more like he had to tell her unless he wanted Jean to report them to the I.C.E.

She was still tempted to but was holding off for the time being since she wanted to know what was going on with I.C.E. before deciding on a course of action. First things first, she needed to find Josh and return the card he had given her the other day and also ask him about I.C.E. She doubted that he was even still in the school after getting chased around by agents last week, but if he was, then she was going to pry that information out of him somehow.

Jean had wanted to stay out of all of this, but after some thinking, she decided that she was going to find out what was going on with I.C.E. Her normal life had come to an end when the building exploded that day. Might as well figure what all of this was about. It was probably more dangerous to stay in the dark and not know what was going on than to go out and investigate.

While waiting for the other two to arrive or for the class to start, whichever one came first, Jean was scrolling through her phone, looking at the news. Almost everything was on the fire that happened at the I.C.E. building. But that was expected since there wasn't exactly anything else that would top something like the biggest building in Blue Zone on fire, and it was done by terrorists too nevertheless. If something as big as that isn't worth reporting, then nothing is.

While Jean was distracted by her phone, she didn't notice that one of her classmates was calling out to her. "Jean. Jean. Uh... Jean?"

After calling her name three times, Jean finally heard it and turned her head up. "Hm? Oh sorry," she apologized to the person who was trying to get her attention. It was a boy. What was his name again? Jean looked at him and thought hard for a moment before recalling his name. "Umm... Allen, right?"

"Yeah, you got it right."

If Jean remembered right, he sat in the front of the classroom, in the first row. He was normally very quiet and minded his own business. This was their first time talking, and she had no idea what he wanted to say to her. "What is it?" she asked Allen. From the looks of it, it sounded like it was something important. Wait... Is it a confession? No, Allen didn't seem like the type to do something like that in the middle of class where there were a bunch of people watching. It was probably something else... she hoped.

Jean looked at Allen, unsure of what he was going to say or ask. The rest of the class was curious about what was happening and was watching the two of them. "Um..." Allen scratched his head awkwardly. She didn't like where this was going. Allen took a deep breath and began to say, "The thing is-" but was cut off when Jean put her hand up, telling him to stop.

"Is it something important?" she asked him.

"Uh... Not really? I mean, it's kind of important to me I guess," he corrected himself.

"Um... Can it wait until after school, or maybe you can tell me it during lunch?"

Allen looked confused. "Sure? But I think the rest of the class also wants to know."

"They want to know?"

"I want to ask you if you knew what was going with I.C.E." Allen finally said it out loud after a lot of hesitation.

"Oh." So that was what he wanted to ask. Phew, she was worried there for nothing. Wait... why was he asking her about this? Did they know that she knew something that they didn't? Her first worry was over, but a new one arose. "Why are you asking me this?" she asked Allen suspiciously.

"Doesn't your dad work for I.C.E.?"

"Yes, but how do you know that?"

"Because... your friends mentioned a few times?" he replied with uncertainty.

"Oh." Jean was really worried over nothing. She was overthinking things too much.

"Yeah, do you know what's up with I.C.E. these days?" another one of her classmates also asked the same question.

"If you know, tell us." The rest of her classmates started jumping in one by one and began bombarding her with questions. They were all talking on top of each other to the point where Jean could barely make out the words to one of them.

"Stop!" she shouted at her classmates. Surprisingly, the moment she told them to stop, everyone did in fact, stop. Jean sighed and explained to her classmates, "I don't know a lot about what is going on, but my dad said it had something to do with I.C.E. not making progress in a long time." Of course, that was partially a lie. She did somewhat know what was going on but didn't know everything. And even if she did, she wasn't going to tell them about it since if she did, she would get in a lot of trouble.

It was already public knowledge that I.C.E. hasn't been able to make any progress for some time now, so telling them that would only confirm what they think was going on, which was that terrorists were attacking I.C.E. because they weren't happy with I.C.E. being so slow.

"Well... Most of us here already guessed that" Allen said. "What we want to know is if you know something that we don't," he bluntly told her. They weren't satisfied with her answer.

Jean needed to think of something. They weren't going to be convinced if she told them that her dad knew nothing either because it was unbelievable for her to say that someone who has worked at I.C.E. for such a long time would not know more about its situation than a person who didn't work at I.C.E. "The terrorists might have worked for I.C.E. in the past," she told her classmates. She wasn't sure if that was true herself, but from what Jackson has told her so far, it was likely that some of the terrorists were in fact ex-employees of I.C.E.

"That's certainly something new," one of her classmates commented. "How do you know that, or is it just a guess?" she asked Jean about the validity of her statement.

"My dad said that a lot of people quit a few months back. They might have formed the terrorist group. I don't really know anything else other than that," she told them. Hopefully, this was enough for her classmates. She really didn't want them to ask any more questions.

"Do you really not know anything else?" Allen asked.

"No," she told him with a straight face. 'Please just be satisfied with this,' she desperately begged in her head. Jean didn't know what else she would tell them if they kept pushing her.

"Are you sure? There might be things that you think we already know when we actually don't," Allen reasoned. "We still have some time until class starts, so can you tell us what you think we might not know?"

'Ugh...' If Jean knew this was going to happen, she wouldn't have woke up so early and would have come to class when it was just about to start instead.

---

Grammar errors, story errors, other errors, and advice, email flightless05@gmail.com

Thanks!