PICKING UP THE PIECES.
❝You thought you could break me? honey, you aren't the first.❞
Isabel Stark has lost the memories of her past. They haunt her during her sleep. The Avengers, the only family she's ever known, has disbanded. Her childhood fri...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"He isn't back?" I hissed at Ned as we walked into the Decathlon challenge, the boy rushing towards me as if he wanted to ask a question. Ned shook his head. I knew I came off angry, but I was worried sick. Even if he didn't want me to follow him, I should have found some type of way to stay in contact. A comm of some sort, or another thing like Rocket's orb.
As my peers dumped their belongings on the table at check point, I veered off to a few chairs by the wall and whipped out my phone. I hurriedly typed in his phone number, giving a glance as Mr. Harrington began talking with our competitor's teacher. Within seconds of me pressing the number, I was told by an operator to leave a message.
"Well, fuck you, Peter," I started once I heard the beep. "Fuck you. Um, we start in twenty minutes, so hurry up. I really don't want to end up sitting next to Flash." I took a shaky breath, clenching my metal hand nervously. "Call me as soon as you can, okay? Please don't be dead."
I ended the call, handing it and my small backpack the lady at check point. I was so worried about Peter that I forgot I was walking through a metal detector, which began to beep loudly at me the second I stepped inside. At first, I thought it was Bucky's necklace that had triggered it, and then I remembered.
"The answer is forty-two!" a member from the opposing team answered correctly,earning a nod from the moderator. Liz and I suppressed a groan. We had been tied since the second quarter of the championship, going back and forth for what seemed like hours. Sometimes the questions were straight answers, and in other cases-
"You are given a pair of tic-tac-toe boards," the moderator reads off her card. "Find a way to determine, when rotated, that they are the same board." Faith slammed her hand on the answering bell, triggering the electronic sound.
"Turn it into a three-by-three matrix then switch the columns," she responded nervously. "Then mirror it and do the same. You can rotate them left or right four times."
"That is correct." Cindy reached her hand under the table and gave Faith a quiet high five. "Translate this saying from the following binary code: zero-one-zero-one-zero-one-one-one, zero-one-one-zero-one-zero-zero-zero, zero-one-one-zero-zero-one-zero-one, zero-one-one-zero-one-one-one-zero, zero-zero-one-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero, zero-one-one-one-zero-zero-zero-zero, zero-one-one-zero-one-zero-zero-one, zero-one-one-zero-zero-one-one-one, zero-one-one-one-zero-zero-one-one, zero-zero-one-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero, zero-one-one-zero-zero-one-one-zero, zero-one-one-zero-one-one-zero-zero, zero-one-one-one-one-zero-zero-one."
I carefully wrote out each number on the piece of scratch paper we received before the competition began, giving a space every time the moderator took a short stop. When she said it out loud, it sounded insane, but after writing it down, it made much more sense. Right as I went to hit the bell, another person from the opposing team beat me to it.
