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I woke with a start. Jon was sitting up in his sleeping bag all sweaty like he had a bad dream. It must've been him yelling. As I started to get up to go over to him I noticed Jade wasn't between us anymore. Instead of comforting him, like I probably should've, I asked:
"Where's Jade?"
Jon jumped up and ran up the stairs. She was probably in the bathroom, but his dream must've made him nervous. I followed him anyway. He ran strait to the attic. Jade was there looking at some old, dusty photos (one had me, the twins, and their parents behind a huge pink cake that had a candle in shape of the number 7 on top).
"How'd you know I was up here?" she asked. She probably wanted to be alone.
"I heard a sound coming from up here," said Jon.
"Why don't we all just go back to bed," said Jade. I just stood there. I was like that some times. I just hang around. Waiting for some thing to be decided on.
"I don't think I could go back to sleep now. Maybe…"
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. Why don't we have breakfast, then decide what to do."
So we went to the kitchen and had bagels and cereal (the kind with the little colored marshmallows). None of us were too good at cooking.
"Does anyone know what time it is?" I asked. No one had looked at the clock since we fell asleep. Jon got up to get his watch.
"Two in the morning." He said. It felt a lot later to me. I could tell they thought so too.
"What should we do? The police won't be back for hours." I asked. I had always liked Steven and Katrina. They were the closest thing I had to real parents and now they were gone. As I thought about it I started to get almost as worried as Jade and Jon.
"The basement," said Jade suddenly.
"Huh," questioned Jon.
"The basement," she said again. "That's where they did most of their work. Maybe something down there will tell us how we can get to the main office building, to see if they know anything."
We all ran to basement. As if running would make them come back faster.
After a half hour of searching file drawers:
"What's this?" I pulled out a grubby looking composition notebook titled "Project Diary". No one heard me though. They were looking underneath a small blue tarp. I walked over to see what it was. They looked like those robotic pets that kids like except they where bigger and more high-tech looking. One was a unicorn the other a dragon. I stuffed the book in to my pocket to study them closer. I leaned so far forward that I tripped and had to steady myself by putting a hand on the unicorn. The eyes lit up and it moved!
"What did you do!?" asked Jon
"I dunno! I just put my hand on it! I must've hit a button!"
"I am Unicorn Zero-Zero-Eight. Identify yourselves." Said the unicorn in a monotone voice.
"I'm Jade, and these are-" she was cut off.
"Jade. I have been programmed to protect you."
"By who?"