Tala thought about buying her parents the drinks they demanded, then opening the bottles and spiking them with some rat poison. She could so easily image them rolling over the floor, throwing up, convulsing in pain, dying

“That shit is going to kill them anyway. Why not just speed the process up?”

But then, she thought how probably she would have to clean it all up afterward, and the image made her feel even worse.

“No, that’s far too good for them. They would just die and that’s it. It would be far better to get a baseball bat and knock their heads a bit. Who knows, maybe that way, something in there might start to work right.”

She sighed deeply, remembering a few good moments she had with her parents, “If I could knock some sense into them, I probably would, but who am I kidding? I can’t help them. Can only protect my little brother.”

And just like that she started running faster and faster, catching herself running next to a guy on a moped. He noticed her and suddenly accelerated just to show off that he could go faster.

She made it to her home without having to stop to catch her breath, something that she did not think she could do.

Standing there, looking at her apartment, she decided to compose herself first. She realized it was not a good way to go through the main door.

There was a better way. She went behind the building, climbed on the garage, jumped up, and pulled herself up to a little terrace next to her apartment, and then just carefully moved a few meters aside to her brother’s bedroom window.

She looked through, seeing her brother lying in bed, covered with a pillow, his body trembling as if he was sobbing.

She knocked on the glass in the rhythm that she knew he would recognize.

He slowly pulled her head up, looked at her, tears still running down his red face.

He just shook her head and moved his lips, "Go away, go away. Go, please."

She put a finger to her mouth and smiled at him, made a goofy face with her eyes crossing, then winged at him as if she knew everything was going to be just fine, and then told him just to open the window.

He smirked, got up, not sure if he wanted to listen to her.

As he came close, she could see her father's fingerprints on his cheek.

Fucken bastards, she told herself but decided to just keep on smiling. There was no way her brother would go to school today, embarrassed by his appearance. No amount of makeup could cover it.

"Hey, come out. Let's go for a walk."

"They'll kill us."

"No. They'll get more drunk and then they'll beat the shit out of you. I’m not staying for that. And neither are you. There’s a whole fucked up world out there. Time to see it all.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. We could wait here and see how bad they will smack us around and then force us to go and buy them more drinks. Yeah, that seems very… interesting. Just come out. And, we’ll wait for the moment they are gone and then we’ll come and get our shit. We can stay at my friend's Gashia place for a night if we need to be."

"You think so?"

"Yes..." she lied. She actually had not talked to Gashia in over two months. A little bit of time they saw each together at school, they pretended not to know each other. Ever since some of the popular girls picked on Tala, Gashia pretended not to know her at all. But Her little brother did not need to know that. So, she just smiled and said, “Just come down now. And we’ll deal with those two assholes later."

She needed him to come out, needed him to be fine. If her parents continued like that, who knew what they were capable of doing later today?

“Okay,” he said as he blew his nose on a big chuck of folded toilet paper.

"Get me my running pants first," she whispered, pointing to her bed and her pants there. She was tired of wearing a school skirt and if there were those men in black still out looking for her, she needed to change her looks completely.

As she helped him come out of the window, she held him tightly, offering support. There really was no reason for it. He was way more athletic than she.

“Close the window, let them beat their heads against the walls figuring out where you disappeared to.”

That made him smile, obviously imagining the scene.

So, swiftly they went down, and she was not sure what was next for them. She figured once they were safe from home, they'd figure something out. She would explain everything to him, and then they would figure things out.

“Wait until I tell you what happened to me this morning,” she started to speak to him, turning back to see if they were spotted. But the windows of their apartment were all blank.

Once they landed on top of the garage, she swiftly pulled her pants up over her skirt and told her brother to go ahead and jump down.

“What about your exam?” he said, sniffing. “You worked…”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“It’s too late now to go, isn’t it?”

Tala did not need to look at the time on her phone to know she could never make it. “Don’t worry about it. We need to go someplace and hang around for another two hours. Then, I’ll tell you the shit that happened to me.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Okay… Where do you want to go?”

Tala was going to offer some good options, but then she noticed the familiar dark van pulling up to their apartment building. Instinctively, she put her hat down and the collar of her jacket pulled up. Then she turned the other way, pushed her hand underneath her brother’s, and let them away.

“We need to move fast. Don’t look around or stare at anyone passing by,” she said quietly. “Don’t look into anyone’s eyes. Just try to smile and look as if you are having a very boring day.”

The seriousness of her tone made him twitch back and a whole new set of worries settled on his face. “What’s going on, sis?”

“Just do what I tell you, and I’ll explain everything later. Now let us pretend we are off to a school, running late.”

So, they found me, she thought. And that was pretty fast. How? They must have a lot of resources then.

Have to be smart - if you don’t want to be stupid, she thought and hit her head with the palm of her hand.

As they made it to one of the small streets, she decided to enter a small shop she frequented on occasion and tell her brother to go and sit in the back where she knew a few tables were almost always empty and hidden from the street.

She watched her brother go, turned around, and walked to the fridge with energy drinks, asking impatiently, “When is my Integration going to be done?”

[Integration will be completed in 3 hours and 20 minutes]

Shit, that must be because I ran like crazy, isn’t it? That means, I just have to go someplace quiet and settle down for two hours, see then what that all is going to be about. And that will give me enough time to think as well.

She grabbed three energy drinks, a bag of chips, and a sealed pack of dried beef sticks. At the counter, she reached out to pay with her card, but then thought better of it, thought of the possibility they could track her down that way. So she shoved the card back in her pocket, and took out her spare cash, using almost all of what she had.

That’s okay. I’ll do a quick run into an ATM machine, pick up the cash, and then be gone. Even if they are tracking me, they would not be able to get to me before I’m gone, she made a plan.

“How come you are not in school?” asked an old lady who attended the store most of the time.

“Oh, we have an emergency doctor’s appointment. Came up. Mom’s busy, so, I’ll take him,” she gave the first excuse that she thought of and smiled.

“Well, I hope your brother feels better,” the old lady answered, smiling back.

Turning back from the lady, she sighed thinking if it was smart to always be nice to people she interacted with. Sometimes that just gave them the idea that they could be too nosy.

“You still hungry?” her brother asked all surprised, watching her bring back the food.

“Starving,” she said, thinking if this could speed up Integrations and by how much.

“Tell me, what is the least likely place for kids to go to when they skip school?” she asked the brother after she almost finished drinking the whole energy drink.

“I do not know,” he said and scratched his head. “The least likely?”

“Yes. The least likely.”

“The graveyard… Kids never go there.”

“Okay…. Then the second most likely…”

He scratched his head some more. “A library… maybe?”

As she thought about where to go, not particularly liking any of her brother’s ideas, she remembered the mission that was offered to her. How much time was still remaining?

She took her phone out, saw the time, and asked, “Mission update?”

[Mission not available any longer.

The lost opportunity of earning 3900 marks

Karma: +10

Your Karma score will be added to your balance once the integration has been completed.

]

The first thing she felt was disappointment. Then, she liked the idea that it was like a game. Then,

What the hell? Karma? How could have I earned some karma? Picking my brother up and saving him from the certain beating of my parents? Is that how? Well, it can't be anything else. Cool. That's actually pretty cool. But...

A big ball of saliva suddenly got stuck in her throat and she could not swallow it or breathe. "Does it mean that everything I do is now judged? And... and... now I'm like constantly being watched? Is that what it is? Damn, damn, damn. I knew I should not have trusted that dude. Nobody lives after a wall like that.

"What are you thinking, sis? You seem awfully quiet. And distant."

She looked at him. And smiled. He wanted assurances. But, she was not sure she could give him any. Tonight, or tomorrow night they would need to go back home. She could not afford to rent an apartment. Maybe could get a room for a night. But tomorrow, and the day after... what then? And he needed to go to school. Certainly, they could not just run away from their parents. Not like that. She had barely enough savings to pay for a few days of staying out of the house, but what were they going to do after?

That was a very sobering thought.

"We just need to stay away from our place for the time being. Let them flush all that craziness out of their system first," she was going to say, hoping that maybe then the situation might get better. But she did not say it aloud since she knew their craziness would not end and could not be flushed out of the system by hard liqueurs and alcohol.

Even if she went back home when they were not around, fixed the place up, washed all the dishes and the windows, did the laundry, ironed her father's shirts, cooked food that she bought with her own money - even when they came home and there was a nice dinner waiting for them, it would not work. She tried it before. More than once. Nothing would work. But what else was there to do?

She regretted not accepting that mission right after picking her brother up. Maybe then she would have some options.

Another Ding and she hopefully checked the messages.

[A new mission update]

Feeling all excited, she decided to check it out.

[Pre-Integration Mission: Adequate Supplement Intake

Mission Class Level: 0

Time Allotment: 15 minutes]

“Interesting. Tell me more about it.”

[Speed up the Integration to under 60 minutes by:

Consuming sufficient amount of calories and nutrients]

Heck, I can do that, I accept this mission,” she said readily, and instantly

[The Mission accepted

Time allotment: 14 minutes and 56 seconds]

Tala instantly looked at the energy bars and started to swallow them, greedily, drinking it all down with another energy drink.

Let’s do this, and see what it will give me.

“Hey, do you have any money on you?” she asked her brother.

“No.”

“Damn, I’m going to use the phone card, and buy something… what do you think is the most nutrient thing in this store?”

“Why do you need that? Are you sick?”

“No. I’ll explain later,” she said as she ran back to get more stuff, watching the counter ticking to 18 minutes.

Running through the aisles, she grabbed two bananas, a bag of dried prunes, a whole jar of peanut butter, and some crackers made of ray flower.

“Yes. This has a lot of nutrients, calories, a whole bunch of shit. That should do the trick,” she thought as she flashed out her phone to pay for the goods.

“You’re crazy.”

“You want some? What, you’re not hungry? Have to eat and grow, you know,” she said as she sat down.

But Chitto just shook his head, not understanding what was going on. After a while, his face still twisted in worry, he decided to ask, "We are not going to stay at Gashia’s, are we?"

Made her sigh. And regret misleading him.

"No," she answered soberly, keeping her answer short, thinking how she did not want yet to go into explaining anything to her brother. Not yet. Not till she knew more.

She checked her time.

[Mission

Time Allotment: 15 minutes and 25 seconds]

Damn, I need to eat faster, just swallow shit up, how hard can it be!!

"We're in a shit pool, aren't we?" her brother asked.

“Berlke,” she tried to speak with her mouth full of peanut butter, then raised her finger and drank some energy drink to free her tongue up.

“We are, aren’t we?” he asked again.

Finally free of peanut butter, she answered him, "Been there for a long time, little brother. But... as long as we’re kicking, we'll freakin’ find the way. If we stick together, we’ll be just fine, you will see,"

She meant it. Every word of it. Except she did not see the dark van pull in front of the store. When she heard the loud steps of a bunch of boots and turned around, it was already too late.