Alive

The Short Explanation

Ross and Nakya and I trek through the house, not caring if we are being rude, and when we find a place to sit, we do. Carlos comes into the same room soon after with a pitcher of tea and cups in his hands.

He sets it all down on the hover table in front of us and then sits in a chair not far from us.

"Help yourselves." He says. 

I'm about to say that none of us want his tea, but right at that moment, Ross takes a cup and pours the steaming liquid into it. Nakya does too, and I have no choice but to follow suite.

Once we are all settled, cups in our hands, Carlos starts.

"Goshi and I needed to create another robot to look just like him. We needed another robot to be a replica of Goshi, and I was going to do it here, but Goshi insisted that he do it. Despite his little problem." 

Carlos glances quickly at me, and I bolt up.

"Little problem? You think I'm a 'little problem'? I'll show you what a little problem looks-"

Nakya interrupts me by placing her hand on my arm, and immediately I chill out. I sit back down as if nothing had happened. The only evidence of my exploding temper is Carlos's little smirk.

"He said he could do it better," Carlos goes on. "He said he knows what he looks like. And we are continuing to build the robot. That's it." He finishes smugly, as if he told us that there was nothing to worry about and was right.

But he never said that, and he wouldn't have been right anyway.

"Why are you trying to build another Goshi though?" Ross asks, literally tilting his head to side. 

I take a quick swig of my tea, hoping Ross didn't notice my smile at his odd expression. Carlos nods in Ross's direction, as if he was explaining complicated things to a bunch of idiots and was encouraging the one who actually kind of understood.

Which, if fact, is not what he is doing.

"We needed a Goshi robot because Goshi dying. Goshi was going to be replaced by the robot, and no one ever would have known. But since you morons decided to go digging around, you now know the sad truth."

I shake my head, wanting to believe it's not true. Needing it to not be true. Tears sting my eyes as I think about all the times I was short and tempered with him because I thought he was doing something wrong. I thought he was lying to me, and as it turns out, he was, but only to protect.

And now I can't stand myself for making him go through that when he was apparently so close to death.

"I'm so sorry." Carlos whispers, not sounding sorry at all.

He sounds triumphant.

So I punch him.

I know violence isn't part of my personality, but right now, I couldn't care less. Yes, maybe the robot will be exactly like Goshi, but it won't be Goshi, and this idiot doesn't seem to care.

His head snaps back in the chair with the impact of the punch, and he stays like that for a moment; head turned back, full neck exposed. Then he moves his head back to the right position. His nose is starting to bleed, but he's still smiling.

"Maybe you guys should leave. After all, it has been 40 minutes since you arrived and I'm guessing you all need to be back home in about an hour or so."

So we leave.

But I wish I hadn't been such an idiot then. Because if I wasn't, then maybe I would have noticed the emphasis on the word guessing. Because maybe then I would have realized that he said 'an hour' smoothly and without thought, just like Ross.

If I had realized those things, then maybe I would have known he heard our brief conversation on his porch. Maybe I would have realized that he heard, not from some security thing on his doorstep, but from a technological voice recorder he put into my system when we were on the phone.

Maybe I could have stopped Nakya, Ross, and myself from having that conversation at school the next day. The one where we talked about how we thought Carlos had been keeping something from us and how we were going to sneak into his house that night.

Or maybe I could have taken the recorder out somehow. Whatever.

It doesn't matter anymore. Because I didn't.

I didn't recognize the emphasis, I didn't notice the smoothness of his voice. I didn't notice the recorder and I didn't notice the evil look in Carlos's eyes.

I didn't realize the danger when my homeroom teacher told me I would get picked up by my dad. I didn't realize that Ross and Nakya's homeroom teachers said the exact same thing to them.

I didn't know that once I stepped outside it was too late.

It was too late to realize, and it was too late to understand. 

It was too late to save us.

I was too late.

And now, because of that, all three of us are trapped in Carlos's house against our will. Because of that, we are all sad and scared and not at all strong. Because of that, Carlos now has the advantage.

Because of that, we are all going to die.