It has been a month and I was finally let out of the hospital. Hugh was staying for another two weeks just to make sure that everything is okay. Vanessa wanted me to stay for another two weeks as well. Like that's happening. I've already been cooped up for way too long. Max and Kyle helped me convince Vanessa to let me leave the hospital. During the time Hugh and I were hospitalized, our rank dropped down to rank 10, but Mrs. Miller let us stay in our house in Sector 3 because of our circumstances.

"You what?" Vanessa asked, shock in her voice.

"I want to get my ears pierced." I repeated. Vanessa and I were currently walking through Sector 3's shopping district.

"Any particular reason?" Vanessa raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. I wanted to try it.

Vanessa hummed. "Well I suppose we can stop by to get your ears pierced after we're done with shopping." I beamed at her. She giggled and grabbed onto my hand, pulling me into another store.

With Syndicate 42 gone, life seems so easy and carefree. I stood behind Vanessa, who was flipping through the clothes on a rack, looking around the store. I still had no clothes of my own and had been borrowing Vanessa's but we didn't exactly have the same figure so we're buying me some clothes.

"Vanessa? I've been wondering." I started.

"Hmm? Wondering about what?" She replied, still flipping through clothes, discarding the more colourful clothes since I had told her I didn't want too much colour.

"Why did you, Max and Hugh join the syndicates in the first place?" I asked, picking up a white tank top with a black hood attached to it. I heard Vanessa pausing before going back to looking for clothes.

"Well... I didn't join for a noble cause or anything. I only joined because they would provide food and shelter for all those that joined." Vanessa spoke in a soft tone, as if she didn't want anyone else to hear her. Is this a hard topic to talk about?

"I lived on the streets for as long as I could remember. My parents had abandoned me on the streets and I had to grow and survive on my own. When I heard that the government was starting the Syndicate program, the only thing that caught my attention was the promise of food and a home. The money we get paid is a nice added bonus too." Vanessa paused to look at a shirt that she found. It was a black t-shirt with bold white words that said 'Fight Me'.

She turned to me, holding out the shirt and I took it eagerly. Vanessa continued to talk, starting to flip through the racks in the next aisle.

"As for Max and Kyle. Max was somewhat similar to you I suppose. He was abused by his parents who whipped him. Apparently he was abused for never doing anything 'helpful'. They dropped Max off at an orphanage when he was around seven years old. Max signed up to join the Syndicate program when he was twelve because he wanted to do something helpful." Vanessa thrusted another item of clothing in my direction. They were black pants that were tight and stretchy.

"Kyle... well..." Vanessa paused in her movements, as if trying to come up with a good way to explain. "Kyle's parents died when he was still really little. He had two little siblings too." Had?

"After his parents died, Kyle and his siblings lived with their grandparents. Kyle joined the Syndicates when he was fourteen. I don't know much about the reason why he joined, but apparently he was brought to the government office by Vincent and Lindsey who helped him out during a patrol at night. The only thing I know is that his siblings were killed." Oh.

I dipped my head and stared at the clothes in my hands. Vanessa patted my head. "Don't worry about it. You had are really hard past too. But we're all happy with where we are now. The past is the past. Don't worry."

I smiled and nodded.

~*~

That hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I thought as I lightly touched my newly pierced ears. My ears were still throbbing even though I had gotten it pierced a hour or so ago. I'm pretty sure it's red too. I looked into the mirror in my room again. I had a small black stud that was linked to a gold helix at my cartilage with a gold chain. I couldn't stop staring at my new piercings.

A loud siren broke my concentration. New mission? Like the last time, the alarm sounded once before all the lights turned off. A hologram of Mrs. Miller materialized on one of my empty walls.

"Hello Syndicate 45. We have a new mission for you. May all of you please gather in the meeting room." The last sentence started to be repeated. To the meeting room then.

The new house is much bigger than the house we previously lived in, but the room was located in pretty much the same place. Right in front of the top of the staircase. Kyle was already at the entrance, with his hand on the wall to open the doorway into the meeting room. Max and Vanessa followed soon after I got there.

Entering the meeting room, Kyle went to the front and tapped on a small screen right at the far end of the table. Mrs. Miller's hologram stopped repeating the sentence.

"Let's get right down to business. In Sector 12, there has been plenty of bombing attacks in the past few days. The buildings that have been bombed were not very important since they were set for demolishing anyways. What really troubles us is the amount of people who have been killed and injured because of these attacks."

"The buildings that have been bombed have generally been some of the taller buildings." Holograms of the area of Sector 12 showed up on the table, the buildings that have been bombed lit up in red whilst the others were in bright, neon blue.

"The debris that falls from the explosions are falling onto citizens who live in Sector 12. The buildings have also been exploding in a way that the debris would fly in all directions, in a full circle. If we linked up the furthest debris that flew during the explosion, it would make a perfect circle with the bombed building in the center."

"We have already found the suspect. Or suspects. They are a family who also live in Sector 12. Your mission is to wipe them out to prevent these bombings from happening again. More information will be sent to your syndicate's account. Thank you."

With that, the hologram of Mrs. Miller disappeared and our lights turned back on. I tapped the table and brought up the information that Mrs. Miller had sent us. It was the address of the suspects as well as pictures of what they look like.

It was a family with four children. Two boys and two girls. The entire family had curly, untamed brown hair, brown eyes and freckles that dotted their cheeks and the bridge of their nose. Other than profile pictures of them, there were other pictures such as the oldest sibling, a girl, who was playing with her siblings, and the parents talking with other adults whose faces were blurred out, leaving only the suspected parents in focus. I frowned.

"They definitely don't look like terrorists or even bad people." Vanessa said. I nodded. Exactly my thoughts.

"Well, looks can be deceiving." Max said, closing his window of the information. My frown deepened and I moved closer to the images, scrutinizing them.

"I'm going to go investigate." I announced eventually. I closed my window as well and grabbed one of the sealed tablets from the room. Fiddling around with it, I opened it up and checked to see if I could access the information on the tablet as well.

"Investigate what?" Kyle asked. I pointed back to the table in response.

"I want to see it for myself. Proof that they really are the people who have been doing the bombings."

"I'll go with you then." Vanessa called out behind me.

I turned to wave her off. "It's fine. I'll be back before dark."

"Oh, and I'm going to use one of the hoverboards." I said as I left the meeting room.

"Alright. Stay safe!" Max called out after me.

There's no way such innocent people can be the ones behind all the bombings. I have to see it to believe it.

I left the house through the back door. There were two buildings that stood in our backyard. One was a training room, similar to the one we had before. The other was a room full of hovercrafts, hoverboards motorcycles, cars and jets. Approaching the door, I placed my hand on a screen beside the door of the building. A beep sounded as the system accepted my handprint and the doors slid open.

One of the walls was aligned with hoverboards. I picked the first one I saw and went back to the backyard, the door to the building closing by itself behind me. Setting the board on the ground, I commanded, "Activate."

"Voice commands accepted." A monotone female voice came from the board as it lit up and began to hover above the ground.

I placed one foot onto the board and quickly pulled my other foot onto the board as well. I swayed around slightly, flailing my arms around trying to balance myself. Once I found my footing, I commanded, "Controls."

The same monotone voice replied. "To fly, use voice command Fly. To go even higher, tap using your feet and then tap again when you want to stop getting higher. To move forwards, step on the accelerator near the back of the board. To turn, lean to the side you want to turn to. To move backwards, lean backwards slightly and place pressure on the foot in the back."

"Okay..." I mumbled under my breath. Now or never.

"Fly."

At the command, more lights blinked on as a huge blast of air came from the bottom of the hoverboard and pushed us up into the sky. I stopped moving upwards when I was nearly four storeys high. This'll do for now.

I inched my back foot backwards until it reached the accelerator. I took a deep breath in and stepped onto the pedal. I started flying at an amazing speed. The wind blew in my face, howled in my ears while my hair billowing behind me. It was exhilarating.

"GPS." I said as loudly as I could.

"Input your destination."

I thought for a moment as I did a sharp turn around a skyscraper.

"Sector 12." I'll look around that Sector while I'm there.