Chapter 31

The day went by fast and before she knew it, it was already lunch. They met up at their usual table for some idle chat while eating. She noticed that Josh was absent again and that his group of friends was all talking to each other with concerned expressions. The new rules were going to take place in a few days and they had to figure out how to split their group.

Lunch went by fairly quickly as well along with the rest of the day. Before long, it was already the end of her last class. Jean left the building and went home. Samantha and Zack were busy and had to leave early and so she walked by herself. They didn't really talk about much during lunch. None of them wanted to mention the fire that happened on Saturday and in the end, the only thing they talked about was the new rules even though it didn't affect them at all.

Well, it didn't affect the two of them, but it might affect Jean. She was worried about how things will go and what might happen. She may not be a terrorist herself, but that didn't mean that she had nothing to be anxious about. Her father worked for I.C.E. and that paired which what he said about a bunch of I.C.E. employees quitting a while back and potentially becoming terrorists made her and her dad somewhat suspicious when compared to everyone else in the school.

Furthermore, she was acquainted with two terrorists that lived right next door to her. That fact alone gave her a lot to be troubled about. What terrible timing. She wanted to find out what I.C.E is doing and was planning on investigating it but the new rules were going to make it difficult for her. The more she found out, the more she risked being caught and labeled a terrorist. But even so, Jean wasn't going to give up before she even started. She wanted to know the truth that even her father didn't know.

For the time being, she probably couldn't visit the laboratory, so she would have to get information some other way. And that some other way involved Jackson and his ever so friendly partner Hans. According to what Jackson told her, he should be done with whatever it was that he was doing the past two days now so she was planning to pay him a visit right after she got home. Well, after she got something to eat. And maybe after she finished her homework too. She didn't want to stay up during the night to do it. Her sleep schedule was finally back to normal after a hectic last week and she didn't want to ruin it. Yep, that was a sound plan.

The walk back home was nice and quiet. There weren't many people outside and she spent most of the time looking at things on her phone as she walked. Normally that wasn't a good idea since she could bump into someone or something but it was fine today. Speaking of which, she usually saw a couple of transportation bots moving around the streets around this time. For some reason, there were none today.

Did something happen that she didn't know about? Or was it because of what happened on Saturday that everything was shut down for some time until things were cleared up? Either way, it wasn't something that she should be too concerned about as she already had enough things to worry over.

Jean walked by the alleys where she had found Josh battered and bruised in and glanced inside while she passed by it. Surprisingly, everything there was like she remembered it. Boxes and other things were scattered all over the floor. There was even some dried-up blood who she could only guess who it could possibly belong to.

Jokes aside, nothing had been touched at all and the only thing that was missing was Josh himself. It would've been pretty funny and ironic if she had found him in there again. Jean made it to her building safely and went up the elevator. Before the doors even opened to reveal her floor, she already started to hear a loud noise coming from down the hall. She didn't need to see it to figure out who were the ones making the noise. It was definitely coming from Jackson's apartment and the two of them were up to something again.

When the elevator doors opened up, she walked over to her apartment and as she expected, the noise was coming from the apartment diagonal to hers. She really wondered how they hadn't gotten reported or received any noise complaints. Did no one mind it or something? Or maybe they did and they got used to it.

Jean knocked on her door instead of using her keys to open it. Her dad was supposed to be at work today, but due to some circumstances that involved his workplace getting set ablaze, he couldn't exactly go back and was staying at home for the time being. He was on break until I.C.E. can either find a place where they could temporarily relocate their employees or repair the floors with the former one being the more probable option until the latter happened.

A few seconds went by and Jean heard footsteps come to the door. Her father opened it to let her in. "How was your day?" he asked after she went in. As he was waiting for her to answer, he peaked his head outside the door to see why it was so loud and got an unsurprising answer to his curiosity as his eyes fixated on the apartment door on the other side of them.

"It was... okay," Jean replied after a slight hesitation. It wasn't good nor bad. It was in the middle. It was one of those days where nothing much really happened. In other words, it was just a plain average day if she excluded what happened this morning.

"Ah, right." Her father closed the door and locked it and went back into the apartment. "Foods ready by the way. It's been lying there for some time now so if you want to you could heat it up again."

"Okay." Jean took off her shoes and went to her room first to drop off everything before going to the kitchen and eating the food. She didn't bother reheating it as it still tasted fine even though it was a little cold. After that, she went to her room to quickly do her homework and then went to Jackson's apartment to see what was going on.

She knocked on his door and waited for someone to answer. A minute passed and no one came and so she knocked again and waited. Another minute passed and no one came. Was whatever it was that they were doing in there that loud that they couldn't hear her knocking on the door? Growing a little impatient, Jean knocked harder and longer on the door this time. But like her two previous attempts, it didn't get anyone's attention.

Jean was about to start kicking on the door when someone came up behind her and asked, "Who are you and what are you doing?" She turned around and saw someone dressed very suspiciously with a phone in their hand. They had shades over their eyes and a piece of cloth covering the bottom half of their face. Furthermore, they were wearing all black. Judging by the tone of their voice, Jean was pretty sure that it was a man.

"Uh..." She didn't know how to respond to that question and slowly backed off from the man. "I'm a neighbor and I wanted to ask about the noise," she told him after some quick thinking. It wasn't a complete lie since it was really loud and she wanted to know what was going on in there.

"Oh." Even though the man said that he didn't really sound like he was buying it. "Well, there's a faster way to figure this out. Frosty."

"Sorry?" Jean didn't know what the man meant by "frosty." Was it some kind of slang that she hadn't heard of? She had been around Samantha for so long that Jean thought that she had heard every slang that ever existed and ones that have yet to exist, but it was her first time hearing something like this.

The man looked at her through his shades for a second before saying, "Nevermind." He walked in front of the door where Jean had been standing just a few moments before and knocked loudly on it. He then turned to her and said, "I know these guys. I apologize for them being so loud and I will tell them to tone it down a little, so you can go back."

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