Chapter 1

Andrew was standing in a room, a very dark one, all the blinds were closed and a flashlight was the only source of light. Andrew was confused, he was in his room one minute then here the next. He looked around the room and saw 4 people, not including him, they all were wearing black shirts and pants. There was only one guy who was not the same, instead of black shirts he had a brown shirt, and Andrew recognized him from most wanted people on a tv show.  That man was a criminal. Andrew knew all these people were criminals, but he didn’t know-how. He looked for a way to escape, but all exits were closed or barricaded shut, and anyway, the windows weren’t an option because a sign said “Room 245 Level 15”. Andrew turned again and saw a duffel bag with nothing in it. He wanted to ask all those people, but he looked closely at them and they had a holster with a gun. He felt like trying to make a run for it, he thought of steps.

Step 1. Run.

Step 2. Move all the stuff away from the door.

Step 3. Open the doo…

“We would like you to help us to break into there,” said the man named Barry, Barry had a very deep voice.

Andrew didn’t know what was going on, he thought that that man meant “out of here.” “Do you mean out of here?” asked Andrew. The man didn’t respond, he just looked at the table in front of them. The thing on top of the table was a map, the map of The Vault. Andrew had never seen the map, he just remembered it from a sightseeing tour of The Vault. 

“Will you help us?” Barry questioned Andrew.

“Will I get the money?”Andrew asked back.

“1%,” Barry said.

“Do I have a choice,” Andrew smiled because he already knew the answer to that question.

“Nope.”

“Ok, I will do it.”

“But how in the world are we going to break into there!” said Andrew pointing at the map, “It’s the highest tech security vault in the world,” All of the people in the room were looking at Andrew like he was a newbie thief, which he was. “Don’t worry,” said Barry, annoyed, “that place will be under our control when we convince that hacker to be a part of our plan,” he finished. All of the people were now looking at Barry. “Sir, pardon me, but what is this hacker’s name?” said Carmilo in a Spanish accent. Everyone was looking uneasy, “I will tell you all later, now GET OUT.” yelled Barry. They all left the room, hating the way Barry would talk to them. The next day they had an idea, but that idea wouldn’t be used soon.

We are now in Herr street, Pennsylvania where a  team of kids will change this whole story. It was morning and Arjun had just woken up to the sound of cooking. His sister, Arya would cook all the time now that they were in quarantine, Covid - 19 has been going on for a year now, but Arjun was thinking about his dream. He always had nightmares, but not the ones like evil wizards and stuff (even though he was obsessed with them), he had a nightmare with real horror. He tried to get them out of his head but they wouldn’t budge. He went downstairs to find Arya about to pour something in a pan, “What are you cooking now?” he said sleepily. “Not telling,” she replied, “first, you should take a shower.” Arjun went upstairs listening to his sister. 

He looked at himself in the mirror, seeing a black-haired boy with blue and brown glasses. He went back downstairs and asked again.

“What are you cooking.?” he asked

“Nope,” Arya replied.

“Nope what?” he declared.

Arya ignored him

“Tell me or I am telling mom that you are cooking”  Arjun snapped.

“Already told her” Arya smirked

Arjun was so annoyed and decided to go to Jack’s house. Jack was Arjun’s best friend, he was a chubby kid with no neck at all and orange hair. When he got there Jack was hacking a website that he made. “What are you doing?” Arjun whispered slowly. “ AHH, Nothing?” said Jack like it was a question. “I saw it, Jack, you don’t need to hide it.” “Ok, fine,” Jack said exhaustedly. But Jack was interrupted by the alarm on Arjun’s phone. It showed a picture of a person looking mad and saying “KARATE CLASS GO NOW,”. Arjun ran out of Jack’s bedroom attic and out of his tiny house.

After Arjun got all ready, he went to warm up, warming up meant learning to do two kicks while spinning in the air. All the black belts have been stuck on this for almost 6 weeks. Arjun was the only one who got close to succeeding which was impressive since Jack and he were in 4th grade. Arjun was sparring with the teacher, “Ok class, today we are going to learn defense, I am going to sparring with Arjun as an example.” said Buug the instructor “I picked Arjun ‘cause he is not bad at karate like all of you.”Buug said under his breath. Now Buug was going for a head kick at Arjun, the head kick landed and Arjun landed on the floor. “Come on, get up,” Buug said in a mean voice. Arjun got back up and they started sparring again. Buug went for the head again, but Arjun wouldn’t fall for that, he grabbed Buug’s leg, fell to the floor, and kicked Buug’s other leg. “Now that is what sparring is,” while laughing on the floor.

When Arjun headed back to Jack’s house, Jack said “Why do you have karate on the weekend?”

But Arjun didn’t respond, he was confused, “How do you know I had karate?” said Arjun.

“I’m a hacker, duh.”

“Wait, so you hacked my phone?”

“Yeah, what's so hard to understand?”

“You unhack my phone right now or I am going to punch you in the face,” Arjun sneered.

“Ok,” said Jack calmly

One thing Arjun didn’t understand was how Jack was always calm when someone yelled at him.

But once more something interrupted his thought. “194 194 repeating anybody there? repeating 194 looks like someone has stolen the map for the vault and we have an alarm going out on the southeast sensor.” The man just stopped talking and there was like a freeze ray sound from the walkie-talkie.

“Did you just hack the police?” Arjun said calmly. 

“Ummmm, I might have,” Jack replied, 

“Well it was funny, one time I heard a lady call about her cats that were stuck in a tree and by cats, she said 5 cats, you know the whole firefighting department went to help her.” 

“Nevermind we got to help that man, sounds like he just got hurt, I heard a freeze ray type of noise.” “What in the world makes you think that man is hurt, maybe they’re testing out a freeze ray,” said Jack, thinking about what Arjun just said. Maybe Arjun just wanted a chance to be a hero. “Oh never mind, just a malfunction, and also our new employee just lost the map.” said the person.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Arjun could hear the police officer groaning over the walkie-talkie. 

“You see Arjun is just a malfunction,” Jack said glaring at Arjun.

“Fine, I will give you that”

“Give me what?”Jack said, trying to exaggerate his point.

“You were right, ok,” Arjun said, getting out of this topic as fast as he could

“You want to play Rublox,” Jack began

“Hahaha, what is Rublox,” Arjun said, he thought Rublox was a funny name.

“Is it when you rub blocks?”

“No,” Jack said feeling offended

“It's my version of that video game, I forget its name.”

“Ok, let’s try it,” Arjun said in a sorry voice. Arjun thought that the game was going to be bad, but surprisingly it was really fun. It had all kinds of games, first-person shooters, obby’s, racing, and even food eating contests. Arjun realized all of these games were realistic, he could play these games for days without becoming bored.

  Arjun was cut short from playing Rublox because his mom Aahna called him from Jack’s house. “Time for dinner Arjun, come down, '' Aahna yelled. Jack knew the yelling was because Aahna was wearing headphones and listening to music, but Jack never told Arjun this. Arjun’s mom was always listening to music, from in the library while reading a book to while watching a movie. When Arjun got home he saw that Alexi (their robot assistant was walking around the house talking to herself, which was not normal at all because one time Arjun asked it for the date and it said: “The date is 1994 May 4” when the actual date was December 5th, 2020. After dinner Arjun went to his bedroom, he was thinking about what that guy had said over the walkie-talkie. Arjun had wondered why there was a malfunction, that area was the most high-tech place in the world. 

For some reason, that person sounded so much like his uncle, but he couldn’t think about that now he had homework. Arjun had woken up from another nightmare. This nightmare was so much scarier than the other one. Since it was the weekend he was going to go to Jack’s house again, but before he could there was a ring on the doorbell. “Arjun, can you go get that please,” Arya asked him. Arjun went to go get the door and there was a package, he looked around and saw nobody so he closed the door, but just when he was about to do so Jack jumped scared him. “I got to tell you something!” Jack whispered into Arjun’s ear. “Me too,” Arjun whispered back. After they had given the packet to Arjun’s dad, they went to Arjun’s room.

“Ok, so what do you have to say,” Arjun questioned Jack.

“Well, what I gotta say is that you know that person from yesterday?”

“Yup?” Arjun answered Jack.

“Well, it happened again.” 

“It happened again,” Arjun said surprised.

“Was it a malfunction?” Arjun said with a surprised face.

“Yep, and it's really weird, it’s supposed to be guarded with all the new tech,” Jack answered.

Arjun agreed with Jack. 

Yeah, I was thinking about that last night,” Arjun responded.

“So what do you want to do,” Jack said, changing the whole topic.

“How about we play hide and seek with Alexi,” Arjun responded.

“No, I brought the walkie talkie and we are waiting for them to say something,” Jack demanded. 

“Ok, fine” Arjun groaned.

“194 194, help people have broken in please come as fast as you can.” said the man

Arjun heard the police on the other side of the call say that it was just a malfunction.

“Do you think we should go?” Arjun asked Jack. 

“HELL YEAH, let’s go,” Jack yelled.

Arjun wouldn’t be surprised if Jack pulled out a lasso and started spinning it like Indiana Jones. When they were on their way to the place they realized something.

“Wait a minute, we don’t even know where we're going,” Arjun realized.

“Oh yeah,” Jack agreed.

“Can you trace the call?” Arjun hoped he could because he was 75% sure that that man was his uncle.

“Yeah, but it’ll take me 15 minutes because it’s a walkie talkie and the call was 15 minutes old,” Jack replied.

After a while, Jack finally traced it to a place called The Vault. It was about 2 miles away, so Arjun was trying to brainstorm a way to get there. When Jack was walking to his home to get something, Jack ran into a 5th-grade girl named Natalie but people call her Nat. 

Nat had black hair with brown eyes and she was Indian. Since Arjun was Indian too, their families prayed together. Jack thought Nat was just going to walk past them, but she came up to Arjun. Nat said to Arjun something about prayers, we got to go pray, and other stuff. Arjun went straight to it; he told Nat everything about what they were going to do to what happened and how Jack hacked the police. Nat only said one thing “I’m in.” Arjun and Jack let her in because she was the captain of the girl’s football team and she is known at school as the “Plan Girl”. Arjun and Jack were still brainstorming, but Nat already had a plan. 

“How about we drive there,” Nat smiled.

“What do you mean, drive there, none of us have a license, and we are going to break the law again,” Arjun snapped.

“We don’t need a license,” Nat was glaring at Jack.

“Ok, fine, my uncle has a big plot of land, big enough to drive a car as a kid without breaking the law, so he taught me how to drive,” Jack was embarrassed saying that.

“Jack, there is no reason to be embarrassed, learning how to drive is super cool,” Arjun said just to cheer up Jack, Arjun was actually jealous that Jack can drive.

“Ok, then what are we going to drive?”

At first, Aayush didn’t know who said that, but then he realized Nat was still there.

“Let’s rent out a car,” Jack said, trying to stop them from getting ideas, but it did nothing. They took Arjun’s dad’s Ferrari.

“Arjun, are you still there, I think you fainted after I parked” Jack was slapping Arjun’s face and screaming his ear.

“YEAH, I’M FINE JACK, STOP SCREAMING IN MY EAR” Arjun yelled at Jack.

“Ok so we are here, but how will we break into a metal building?” Jack said, but this time not screaming at Arjun.

“First, I’m checking my dad’s car, he would go crazy if we dented it,” Arjun said to Jack and Nat. After Arjun finished checking they went to see any entrances to the metal building. They found an entrance after about 10 minutes of searching. “These robbers are terrible at hiding their trails,”  Nat said, but when she said that it ruined everything. When they walked into the opening all of their legs hit something and they looked down to see a net that had super glue on it. Their legs were superglued to a net that was tied to a wall.

“How are we supposed to get out of this,” Arjun said while trying to pull the net away from his legs. 

“I don’t think we can,” Jack said and just gave up. Nat was just laughing on the floor like a worm.

“Am I going mad?” Jack thought.

WHY THE HELL ARE YOU LAUGHING WE ARE STUCK,” Jack screamed.

Nat just looked at Jack and said “I have a knife,” and then she started cutting the net around her legs, Arjun’s legs, and Jack’s. 

“Ok, let's go and find those robbers,” Nat said, and then she handed Arjun a Glove made out of the super glue net. She also handed Jack a gun with rubber bullets.

“What are we supposed to do with these?” Jack asked her.

“Arjun, when you punch someone the super glue will stick to where you hit them, and Jack said that those bullets have a sharp so when you shoot someone they will get hurt from the bullets,” Natalie answered Jack. 

“Oh and Jack those bullets will make someone faint for 30 minutes,” Nat said to Jack.

“When did you have time to make these, are you training for the military,” Jack said laughing.

“In short form, yes,” 

Arjun and Jack looked at each other and started walking. After a while Jack found something.

“Guys come over here, I found something” Jack called them. 

Jack found a note that said “ Help me, I escaped the robbers but I need to find a way to escape. I am a guy with a cap that shows a baseball bat.” 

“Ok so now we're stopping robbers from stealing a diamond and we’re saving a man from robbers, we are kids, what do these people expect us to do,” Jack said sarcastically.

“Well at least it makes up for the two crimes you two did,” Nat said.

“We did huh we did, you helped us with one, so even if we do more crimes to save those people  you are going to put the crime blame on us?” Arjun said to Nat.

“No, I am just saying that you are the ones doing the crimes,” Nat responded.

“Well, you came with us so you are doing crimes too,” Arjun was getting angry with Nat.

“Guys, this is no time to argue we are supposed to be looking for a man,” Jack disturbed the conversation.

“Ok, fine,” Arjun and Nat said at the same time.