On the floor of Kellen's room, both sitting at one end of the coffee table, he and Katia bickered. It seemed they hadn't noticed that I'd returned, so I stood and watched them quietly for a moment.

"What did you do that for, anyways?"

"What? Kidnap Nicole?" Katia's tone was bored as she shuffled a couple papers in front of her. "I was trying to prove a point."

"What point exactly?"

"That you l—"

With a sweep of my arm, I cleared everything off the coffee table, sending it all clattering to the floor. "The roster." I slapped the book down.

Kellen moved to occupy the space between Katia and I. "The what?"

"The roster. It's going to make this a hell of a whole lot easier on us."

Kellen opened the book, turning a few pages almost reverently and then looked at me in awe. "Did you do that?"

"Jess and I, yes."

"Do what?" Katia impatiently grabbed the book. "Oh... wow. How do you even know—? Well, shit, you two are crazy stalkers! This is incredible!"

I laughed at her stupor as she flipped through. "Thanks."

"So, the best we could settle on while you were getting your stuff, Nicole, is that we need to get out of here." Katia didn't look all that convinced by what she said. "It's the only way the drugging will stop, and the only way we'll be able to get any help."

"But how?" Kellen rolled his eyes at his sister.

I dug through my bag and handed Kellen a pen and a large stack of cue cards. "We should regroup everyone based on strengths."

Katia moved to sit across from me, reading upside down. "That could work. It might be easier to work out a plan then."

"What kind of groups would we need?" Kellen asked pensively. "We could run off into the woods, or try to drive out of here, or live like mole people in the tunnels you found under the school, Cole."

"Drive out of here and risk being shot by the wardens?" Katia eyed Kellen like he was crazy. "But you do make a point, we need to have an idea of what we're doing first, and I can tell you now it won't be living in tunnels under the school. Gross!"

Our discussion quickly turned into the siblings bickering and me closing my eyes to block them out.

-.-

I woke suddenly, with a cold film of clammy sweat on my face. What the glitter? I was just with Katia and Kellen, planning the biggest mission any of us had, or would, ever carry out. Had it all been a dream? Had I not really convinced them? 

Had I actually managed to fall asleep despite my worry? But, it was all so vividly real. Sitting up quickly, I found myself thumping onto the floor in an ungraceful heap.

I was in Kellen's dorm. Wrapped in a cocoon of unfamiliar blankets in front of the couch. I was also alone and none of our papers were on the coffee table.

With a yawn, I adjusted my tights and smoothed down my sweater before finding my bag. A note fluttered from it to the floor.

Hero, you fell asleep. We took the party elsewhere so we wouldn't bother you. Don't worry we'll save you some food. —K

That's right. We'd been hungry and called in reinforcements to help; I must have fallen asleep before either arrived. I wondered where they would have gone and pondered texting someone, but found my phone wasn't with me. 

I grumbled as I left, it would have been nice of them to tell me where they'd gone. Pulling the door shut behind me, I noticed the note taped to the front.

Do not wake. Did not sleep all night.

Cute, I thought. I'd taped that same note to a door a mere two days ago after I left my rescuer in a deep, snoring sleep. Only on this one, below Kellen's large blocky writing, was a smaller lilting scrawl.

Go to room 326 for anything important.

In room 326—my room—Jess was alone, sitting rigidly in the bay window. She relaxed as soon as she saw me and sighed, "God, Nicole, you scared us. We thought the wardens noticed how many people were coming in here."

Instantly, several bodies emerged from random hiding spots and converged at my bed, flipping back the covers. How had I not noticed a body on my bed? Jackson hopped off and quickly straightened the cards he'd upset when he'd chosen his hiding spot.

Jess gave me a sly questioning look at my choice of outfit, but said nothing else. Kellen launched into breaking down what had been accomplished while I'd been asleep; it hadn't been all that much. After eating, they'd begun sorting people into groups, with Jess, Jackson and Vivienne's help.

"So, we could use some back up brainstorming, here, but I didn't know who you'd want, Nic." Jess gestured at my bed, which was covered in piles of cue cards.

I examined the cards, hundreds of names were scrawled on them, and though they'd started categorizing them, they hadn't thought of everything yet. Extra eyes would definitely help with that. "Eddie, Em, Ashley, Katy, Brian."

I wasn't surprised when they arrived in under three minutes; Jess had them on standby and was simply waiting for my ok. As the new additions settled into the room, it was Vivienne who asked again, gesturing to the cards. "What are we trying to do here?"

"We're trying to figure out how we're going to get out of here." I said, but Vivienne only looked at me blankly.

"So," Kellen jumped in. "We're going to brainstorm, and cross reference all the ideas with the information we've got there."

Despite me being part of the Thunderbirds Elite, it took Kellen's statement to get Vivienne on board. As if I wasn't high enough on the scale for her to listen to. "Makes sense." She nodded. "So are you, like, regrouping the armies or something?"

Kellen waved a hand in my direction. "Before we do anything else, I need to make sure that you all know who's in charge here. All questions should be directed to Nicole, she's the brains and heart here—Katia and I are only here as figureheads. Nicole?"

A brief heat rushed over me, and I smiled tersely as Katia nodded in agreement. Jess and Jackson grinned proudly as pretty much everyone else's mouths dropped open in surprise. "Uh, Thanks." 

"Okay," Vivienne jumped in before I could say anything else. "I'll listen to your little Ace, Kellen, but I do have a question. What are we going to tell everyone? Because, a mad scientist is going to experiment on us till he kills us or turns us into mind controlled zombie kids is not going to go down well. We'll be lucky if they don't laugh at us and send us to Ms. Harris for being crazy."

"Which is why," I answered, "we're only telling them what they already know. We're getting out of here to avoid being drugged anymore, because we're all sick of it and wondering what's going to happen if this keeps up. They're already listening to you guys, so they'll go along with this."

Vivienne nodded as several of the others agreed that that would be enough to get everyone else to follow us. Telling them more would only result in mass panic, and that would not be good.

With a sweeping gesture of my arm, I indicating the work that had already been done. "As you can see we started grouping people here based on things we may need for a getaway, but once we have a solid idea of what that getaway is, we'll regroup them to support the plan and set it in motion. So, let's get started with ideas."

"I wish we could just contact home," Ashley sighed, then gasped and looked at Eddie. "Is that possible, Eddie? Can you do that?"

How had I forgotten that my newest bestie was a computer genius and amazing hacker? If he could do it, then all of this didn't even need to happen.

Eddie chewed his lip as he thought and frowned as he shook his head. "Not without getting into Tannen's office..."

"That's a definite no." I narrowed my eyes at his still thoughtful expression; I would not allow Eddie to do it.

"Of course." Kellen affirmed, giving me a sharp look. "It was bad enough that this reckless idiot did it once, we are not risking anyone going in there again."

In two hours, we had a plan, a mountain of task lists, and a very short time in which we hoped to cross all the items off.

Katia and Kellen made notes to find out about all the secret prank material their sublings had brought at the beginning of the year and over Christmas break. Like Katy and her under-the-radar explosives, there were a lot of others, whose secret stashes would be immensely useful to us. Whatever weapons were being worked on for pranks before our detente, were to be finished so we could fit them into our plans.

Brian and Katy were responsible for keeping tally of the arsenal and preparing to move all of it. Emma and Eddie, with the squad we'd assigned them, needed to know the maps of the school, the grounds and the underground forwards, backwards and upside down; they would plot our escape route. 

Jackson and myself would scope out a place using the maps they provided. Vivienne and Ashley were charged with supplies; everything we'd need to survive, from toilet paper to blankets. Since we were desperately considering escaping to the forest in February's weather, we'd need all the supplies we could get. Jess' job was food, and whatever we'd need for it. Robert and Leon, who we called in, would organize materials we may need, and work on getting them out of the Academy without being noticed.

We were sure by morning, there would be more to add to our lists, things we hadn't yet thought of, or prepared ourselves for, but we separated anyway. A hijINKs notice went out to let everyone know what was going down. In the two hours before dinner, there was a lot of work to be done.