Edit | #Wattys2016

Fourteen

Carmen meets us outside the meeting room after breakfast. I'd almost chickened out and decided to skip breakfast when I remembered about the fact that I had to use Edit again, but Chance insisted that I eat.

"Alright," Carmen presses her thumb to a button on a wall, and a hologram pops out. After concentrating for a while and solving all the weird codes and whatever that is that Carmen uses as a protection against intruders, the lasers slowly disappear, and we all step into the room.

"Coffee?" Carmen asks as she heads towards the machine.

I shake my head no, but the boys nod, and Dustin offers to "pay" for it this time. Carmen waves him off and fills three cups. When Chance gets his, he nods at it and then raises his eyebrows at me in a silent question. I shoot him a smile and a slight shake of my head as my answer. Chance nods, before kissing my temple, leaving sparks flying down my spine, and watching as Carmen opens the map.

"Okay," she glances at Chance, "I managed to find out what the sensor is like." She slides a holographic file towards Chance with her index and middle finger, and Chance stops it with his thumb as it reaches him.

Tapping the table, the file returns to a two-dimensional structure, and Chance begins to "flip open" the file like I do with electronic books.

His brows scrunch together. "How the heck do they get so much good ideas? They're just so twisted."

"Glad you found out, Adams," Carmen says sarcastically, earning a bitter laugh from Chance.

"I've brought my notebook, can I see the map again?" Dustin says, drawing my attention back to Carmen.

"Yeah, sure," With another few presses on the table, the map appears, and Dustin takes his time to scrutinize it, sketching out the floor plan.

Then I realise that some lines are uneven and almost all the lines he draws are thick, making it hard to get rid of the mistakes. I itch to help him, but hold back.

After one very messy and crooked floor plan is drawn, Dustin sends his sister an apologetic smile, before turning to me.

"Pretty sure you can do better. Why don't you try?" He passes me his notebook and pencil.

I try tapping the table like Carmen does, but the map remains as a three-dimensional block. Instead, it whirls around, making me dizzy. Carmen laughs, and swiftly changes the dimension of the map, and clicks on the floor plan for level one.

Flipping to a fresh page, I decide to start off with the right side. The floor plan starts to take shape on the paper, although the lines aren't completely straight, and I make a point of shading the exits and entrances. The only difficulty is that there are many people walking around on the campus, and the walls and pillars and stairs are not so distinguishable.

Soon enough, the first level is completed, and I start on the second and the third.

Once I'm done, I pass the notebook and the pencil back to Dustin and glance over at Chance. He's writing something, having obtained a few pieces of paper, but when I try to see,
he quickly hides the papers.

His cut from getting the paper is fresh, and I don't want to risk him getting infected, so I grab a HealStrip from my pocket—I've been making a point to get them now since I have no more healing potions—and paste it on Chance's wound. The HealStrip's neon green colour begins to fade a little, meaning that the healing potion inside it is working. Chance sends me a warm smile that makes my insides melt.

Dustin lets out a low whistle, nodding at the sketches I made. I ignore him, and turn to Carmen, remembering something.

"Carmen, how are we going to get up there, if we don't have a pod? Dustin destroyed his," I say.