"Emma... Hey, Emma, wake up!"
Will I ever get to sleep in peace? I grumbled to myself, lazily rubbing my eyes and stretching. Peering through the darkness, I noticed a familiar silhouette standing a couple of steps away from my bed.
"Albert, what the hell are you doing in our room?" I mumbled sleepily, yawning, then added, "Won't your parents tear your ears off if they find out you're sneaking into girls' rooms at night?"
The dark figure flinched and snorted in annoyance. I could vividly picture Albert's face turning red with embarrassment, just as I had hoped. I enjoyed teasing him sometimes, just to see him get all riled up—playfully, of course.
"I'm not doing anything like that!" Albert's offended voice came close to breaking into a shout. I chuckled quietly, knowing my little jab had hit its mark, then glanced around the room. The bunker bedroom where my family and I had been living for the past six months looked entirely normal, except for one thing—the absence of my parents. I immediately understood what was going on.
"Another emergency meeting tonight, huh?" I perked up.
"Yeah," Albert grumbled, clearly still sulking. "And you were sleeping like a log, as usual. If it weren't for me, you'd have missed everything!"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Will you wait outside while I change?"
"Fine. I'll stop by to wake Anna up too," he replied, heading for the door. At that moment, a brilliant idea popped into my head.
Sorry, Albert, but I'm not letting this chance slip by!
"See? And you say you don’t sneak into girls' rooms!" I said with a grin, barely holding back my laughter.
Albert froze on the spot, then quickly spun around and charged at me. I grabbed my pillow and held it up as a shield, bracing for the attack.
"I told you, I'm not doing anything like that!" Albert shouted, waving his fists and hammering at the pillow. I couldn't hold back any longer and burst out laughing, nearly to the point of tears. Thankfully, there was no one in the neighboring rooms, or we would have surely woken them with our antics.
"Emma, you're such a pest!" Albert finally concluded, calming down after his outburst.
"Yeah, I know," I replied cheerfully, not even bothering to deny it.
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Our trio, consisting of me, Albert, and Anna, quietly snuck down the corridor to a hidden corner on level -2, our usual spot, which we believed to be a blind zone. Our parents had once again left in the middle of the night for their secret meetings or research, and, as usual, our curiosity got the better of us, prompting us to try and sneak a peek at what they were up to.
We actually had a well-practiced plan. Albert, being the smallest of us, would crawl through the ventilation shaft towards one of the rooms where something interesting might be happening and leave a camera there. Then, he’d crawl back. Usually, the next night, we’d come back, retrieve the recording, and, if we were lucky, watch some highly secret and exciting footage. That’s where Anna came in—she was great with retro-tech and could hook up the camera to an ancient TV in the rec room and fine-tune the image. Her skills were impressive, and Albert and I jokingly called her a hacker. Though, I think the nickname embarrassed her a little.
"There's nothing special about it. My parents just have a collection of old electronics from the 2000s to 2030s," she once casually mentioned.
As for me, my role was to decipher the scientific terms, many of which I had been familiar with since childhood because my parents always liked to discuss their work at home. Though I have to admit, even I didn't always understand what the recordings were about. Some of the terms were just too complex and confusing.
"Well, here I go," Albert said enthusiastically, removing the grate from the ventilation shaft entrance. The excitement in his eyes showed how much he enjoyed these kinds of adventures. And although I always worried about him, I had long since stopped trying to talk him out of these excursions.
"Just don't take too long," Anna instructed as she handed Albert her camera.
"And be careful," I added. He snorted in frustration at this.
"I know, I know. Why are you acting like it's my first time?" he whispered indignantly, then smirked confidently. "I'll be back in a flash, before you even notice."
"Come on, get going," Anna urged him.
Albert nodded at us, signaling that he was ready for the mission, and quietly crawled into the shaft until he disappeared from view around a corner. All Anna and I could do was wait for him to return.
"Hey, Anna, did you bring the player?"
"Of course," she smiled proudly. "How could I forget?"
Anna, you're a lifesaver! I cheered inwardly. Listening to music was a great way to pass the time, which is what we usually did while Albert was on his mission. And even though the player didn’t have modern hit songs, it was still great to listen to retro music. It suited the mood and atmosphere inside the bunker, isolated from the modern world.
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I could barely sit still, nervously bouncing my knee. Judging by Anna’s unusually tense expression, even she, normally calm and collected, was feeling the same way. She sat beside me, furrowing her brows, her thoughtful gaze cast downward but seemingly unfocused on anything in particular.
"Where is he?!" I finally hissed, almost shouting. "He should have been back by now."
"Emma, calm down," she replied nervously. "It’s too early to panic. There must be a reason why he’s delayed, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon."
"But what if something happened to him? This was a stupid idea. He's younger than us, and yet he’s doing the most dangerous part of the job! How will I face his parents..."
"Hey, don’t start spiraling, okay? We don’t know why Albert hasn't come back yet. I think we just need to wait a little longer."
Silence hung in the air. On one hand, Anna might be right, and it was too early to jump to conclusions, but I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in my gut.
"Maybe we should go look for him?" I suggested uncertainly, glancing toward the ventilation shaft. I couldn't get rid of the thought that Albert might be in danger and need our help.
"And where exactly would you go? Do you even know which direction he chose this time? You might miss each other, and then where would we find you? More likely, you'd just get lost. Just wait."
"I can't take it anymore..."
"Hey, quiet..." Anna suddenly interrupted me. "Do you hear that?"
I immediately fell silent and started listening. Somewhere in the distance, the echo of footsteps and hushed voices of a group of people could be heard, growing closer with each passing second.
"Damn, someone's coming!"
Anna instantly jumped up and scrambled into the ventilation shaft.
"Grab the grate and follow me, quick," she commanded.
Shaking off my brief stupor, I grabbed the grate with trembling hands and rushed after her. Climbing into the shaft was incredibly awkward, and we had to act fast. I crawled in feet first, unintentionally kicking Anna as I did so, since she hadn’t yet crawled far enough ahead. She only huffed in irritation, not daring to make any louder sounds.
I'm sure she'll tell me exactly what she thinks of me later, I thought to myself.
Once we were both fully inside the vent, I quickly fixed the grate back into place. We froze, waiting. It was unbelievably cramped and uncomfortable, but we were too scared to even move. It felt like the slightest movement would give us away. Holding my breath, I peered through the holes.
Did they catch Albert? Have we been found out? What will happen to us? Will we be punished? A flurry of anxious thoughts raced through my mind.
The footsteps grew louder, signaling that someone was about to round the corner of the corridor. Shadows appeared first, then the figures of people. I let out a silent sigh of relief. It was just a group of scientists, walking down the corridor while whispering heatedly amongst themselves. Unfortunately, I couldn't make out their conversation. Only small snippets like "This is certainly a success," "Utterly outrageous!" or "Are we really going to do this?" reached my ears, only fueling my curiosity. It was obvious that something interesting and controversial was happening among the staff. The good news was that no one was looking for us, which meant our secret operation was still in play.
But happiness didn’t last long. My mood instantly dropped when I spotted my parents among the scientists passing by.
Damn, they're going back to the room, and they'll notice I'm gone. I'm so busted...
Finally, the corridor fell silent, and I could relax. But then I heard a rustling sound behind me and felt someone grab my leg, making me jump and nearly scream. Whipping around, I saw Anna grinning and Albert peeking out from behind her, waving at me. Absorbed in my thoughts about the punishment awaiting me and trying to come up with a good excuse, I hadn’t even noticed his return.
"Albert, where have you been?!" I immediately snapped at him, though deep down, I was incredibly relieved that he was okay.
"I'll tell you in a second. You won't believe what I saw!"
"Let's get out of here first," Anna suggested, which made sense. Lying in the cramped ventilation shaft was extremely uncomfortable. My arms were starting to go numb from the awkward position I'd been in while waiting for the danger to pass.
Once we were out, Albert, who was practically bursting with excitement and eager to tell us everything at once, finally exploded:
"You won’t believe it! I saw a robot... and they were doing something with it. I’m not exactly sure what... but there's a real android robot in the bunker!"
"Whhaaat?!" Anna and I both exclaimed in unison, shocked by what we had just heard.
"W-wait, are you sure? Isn’t it way too risky to be conducting experiments with androids when there’s a rogue AI uprising going on outside?" Anna asked, voicing her doubts, and I agreed with her. It all sounded way too suspicious.
"One hundred percent sure! I saw everything with my own eyes and recorded it all," he said smugly, handing us the camera, clearly showing that he had undeniable proof and was ready to stand by every word. "See for yourselves when you watch it."
"Speaking of the recording... why did you deviate from the plan? You were supposed to just leave the camera like we always do! Do you have any idea how worried Anna and I were?"
Albert put on a guilty expression and averted his gaze, avoiding eye contact with me.
"I just didn’t have time... They would’ve heard me if I tried to leave earlier," he muttered in his defense. Still, for some reason, I had the feeling he did it on purpose.
"Well, what’s done is done," Anna sighed. "We’ll check out the footage tomorrow night, but right now we need to get back."
"Speaking of which," I added anxiously, "our parents have probably returned to their rooms by now and noticed we’re gone. What are we going to do?"
We fell silent, deep in thought. It was clear that if we didn’t come up with a good excuse, our chance to watch the secret footage tomorrow could be ruined. And that couldn’t happen, not now that we had such a unique recording on our hands.
"Well..." Anna drawled out with a sly grin, "you and Albert could always say you went on a little midnight date."
"Anna!"
We both shot her a disgruntled look, offended by her dumb joke.
"That’s enough!" Albert snapped, almost shouting. "You’re always teasing me, but I’m younger than you, and older kids aren’t supposed to pick on the younger ones! Maybe you two should just find boyfriends if that’s all you can think about. You perverts!"
"Yeah, Anna, how could you? I didn’t expect this from you!" I chimed in, feigning offense and completely ignoring the fact that part of his accusation was aimed at me too.
"Oh, come on, I was just joking! Why do you two take everything so seriously?" Anna laughed. "But seriously, we’ll just say we woke up, saw no one was in the room, waited for a bit, got worried, and went to check if something had happened. Simple, easy to explain, and low risk."
Still feeling a little hurt, we agreed to her plan. It sounded convincing enough, and it seemed like it would work. With that, we parted ways, agreeing to meet in the recreation room the following night.