The safe house was quite pathetic to look at. It was a worn down, beat up, two floor apartment building that had been scheduled for demolition which was supposed to start thirty-two years ago. The walls were crumbling and the rotting wooden doors all looked like a single gust of wind would cause them to disintegrate.

“Wow… this looks sooooooooooo safe,” one of the kids muttered as we all got out of the truck and looked at the building.

“It’s safer than where we were,” Aidan responded as he shrugged and went towards the building, “we won’t be here long anyway.”

Slowly we all followed behind him. He pushed the front door and instead of opening it broke off the hinges and fell into the building, cracking as it struck the ground. Aidan shrugged again and went inside, the rest of us stood there a little longer.

“If anyone follows us they won’t even have to do anything… the building will kill us for them,” the girl named Chloe muttered in disgust as she walked by me and over the fallen door.

“Maria doesn’t want to kill us… well not all of us at least… me, Aidan, and Ryker are the only ones she’ll want dead, she and Chronos put way too much into getting all of you to kill you now,” Xander replied as the rest of us followed Chloe inside.

Aidan was sitting on the counter of the desk that was in the middle of the lobby waiting for us to come inside. I looked around and decided that what the doctor on the ship had said about Earth not being as nice down here as it looked from space was true. I hadn’t seen much, but we passed at least a dozen buildings that were in the same condition as this one on the way here, and another dozen or so that were worse. The air smelled so strongly of factory pollution that it made me want to vomit. The forest had been nice, but extremely small compared to forests on Pluto, and it looked like it was in the process of dying. I had seen almost no animals since landing at the Chronos facility… the one raccoon I had seen outside the building we had just walked into looked sickly and thin… a few days from death.

“Aidan, I really wish you had left me to die on Pluto. This planet is awful,” I said as I leaned on the desk the teen was sitting on, “I never would have imagined it would be so… trashed.”

“It’s been trashed for well over a century… why did you think humans had to colonize the other planets and form the Solar Republic?”

“I guess I’d never really thought about it… it’s sad.”

“Yeah, well thousands of years of humans cared nothing for this planet, and so the planet got abused… my grandfather told me stories about what it used to be like on Earth, stories that his great-grandfather had passed down to him… I never saw what it was like, but I definitely miss it even though I never saw it.”

I was about to reply when a loud ringing sound suddenly started from behind us. It was coming from a computer that looked way too old to be able to work. We looked at the device for a moment before Aidan quickly jumped over the counter and clicked a button on the display.

“Are you Aidan Colt?”

The voice came from crackly speakers that were sitting on either side of the display.

“Yes,” Aidan said as he messed around with the volume on the speakers to make them a little easier to understand what the person on the other side was saying, “I’m Aidan… who are you?”

“Remy Kera, I’m with the ACR, I’m coming to get you and the kids and bring you to our headquarters,” the voice answered, it was a little easier to understand now that Aidan had messed with the volume, “should be there in about three hours… you need to be ready to leave as soon as we get there, we don’t want to take any more time than necessary getting you out of there and back to HQ… Chronos is undoubtedly hunting you down.”

“I’m sure they are,” Aidan said through pursed lips, “you can’t get here any faster than 3 hours?”

“Unfortunately my team was the closest to the safe house when Colonel Joseph got in touch with us about his plan,” Remy replied regretfully, “we’re moving as fast as we can to get to you but I can’t promise anything sooner than three hours.”

“So what’s the plan if Chronos catches up to us before you get here?”

Aidan was biting his lip nervously, this was the first time I’d seen him look nervous before, and that terrified me. If he was nervous about us getting caught before the ACR could get to us then that was a problem.

“If they find you before we get there, then get out… fast. We’ll find you somehow,” the man responded uncertainly, “I have to go now we’ll see you kids soon.”

With that the speakers cut off and the screen went dark with Aidan and I still looking at it.

“That’s encouraging,” I said sarcastically as I stared at the blank screen for a moment longer before looking back up at Aidan.

Aidan scoffed quietly before responding, “and here I was thinking I was joining a group of people ready to take Chronos down… Remy doesn’t sound like he’s very sure of their chances.”

I glanced over at the rest of the group sitting in the lobby. Xander was sitting on the floor playing Rock Paper Scissors with one of the younger kids, seeming like he was trying to distract her from everything. A different kid was sitting on the couch behind him braiding his hair and laughing. Other kids were in small groups talking to each other nervously. I looked back at Aidan and saw him nervously biting his lip again.

“If Chronos finds us before Remy and his people get here… what are we gonna do?”

“Since me and Xander are the only ones who would stand a chance against whoever they sent to find us in a fight we’ll distract them while you get everyone into the truck and ready to go. Once they’re ready Xander and I will come join you and we’ll drive and hope for the best.”

“Well… at least we have the start of a backup plan,” I said before chuckling nervously.