I kept on imagining all the food I was to eat, and I'm sorry if I always think about food but it's a stage, just understand me. We had been promised that we would be taken swimming too in town, at the prestigious Jumia Hotel. Wendy was excited about the idea. She even bought herself a pair of swimming costumes and put it next to her bed, just in case someone tried to steal it. I woke up early the next morning despite having gone to bed late. I needed to prepare on time. I had not not even a second to lose. I went and switched on the television. They aired cool movies and animations on Christmas days and I was not willing to miss that year's.
Mom got up and started cleaning the house as Aunt Faiza washed the dishes and prepared breakfast. Grandma went to check on her poultry as grandfather was still sleeping. It was going to be a great day indeed. Mustafa had gone to Jacob and Sons' Hardware to bring a tent and gathered some of his friends to help him raise it up. He also brought chairs. They even hired a DJ for the occasion,wow. Within no time, the air around us was filled with the sweet aroma of spices and yummy food. I could not wait to have a taste of everything. About getting clean, I took a bath immediately I got off the bed and put on my new fancy clothes. I wanted everyone to see me in them. I felt proud walking in them. Wendy noticed how unsettled I was so she commented,"You look great, baba." I felt like I was on top of the world.
Aunt Stephanie came just in time to assist with the cooking. She said that she had talked to her husband, uncle Raph and he had said that he would drop by too. He lived abroad and his family had come to the rurals about a week ago. He still had some business to attend to before coming home. I had often heard of him being a very wealthy guy but I had never met him before. I really wanted to see how he dressed. I had always said that if I made it in life I would have expensive clothes.
Anyway, by 11 everything was ready and food was brought to the tent. It was on self-service basis. We ate quickly as we waited for uncle Musa to give Mustafa a heads-up to take us to town. Everybody got busy. The adults were catching up and the kids were eating and dancing to the music the dj was playing. By 2 in the afternoon we were in aunt Faiza's vehicle heading to town. There were twelve of us and we were so excited about it. Some of my cousins never went to town oftenly and most of them were amused by almost everything they saw in town. Thirty minutes later we were at the gate. We paid the entrance fee and were guided to where the pools were. There was the adult section, the teenagers section and our section. Wendy left for the mall complaining she could not bare spending the rest of her day with us. Girls! Anyways, we were excited to be in the pool. We quickly changed into the correct attires and dived in the water. Felix had also come along, Sam would have never left him behind. We were making jokes, competing on who was the best swimmer; something yours truly was best in, and splashing water on each other's faces. Then all over sudden everything came to a stop. The laughters around us seemed to take too long to come to halt. Suddenly a pale blue light was seen from the furthest corner of the pool, just next to the washrooms.
"No, not again," Sam cried. It seemed like he had seen a ghost. He was shaking. Sam and I seemed to be moving normally but those around us were all in slow motion.
"What do you mean not again, Sam," I yelled at him.
"This is what happened before they took me the other day. Everything stopped moving and something came out of a blue light. Please don't let them take me again, please." I had never seen Sam that frightened before. He often got angry but never frightened. I pulled him out of the pool and told him to run as I stared at the blue light to see what was to come out of it. Sam was well ahead of me and almost out of the gate when I saw a robot come out of the light. I began running towards Sam. I didn't even notice how I went past him. I tried to look back while running to see if the robot was after us and lo, it was almost catching up with Sam. I almost knocked myself on the Black City wall when I made a turn towards Sam. Within no time I was next to him and had him on my back heading back to the pool. The robot was moving so fast. I didn't know Kisumu well enough to be running around so I just stopped next to the pool and waited for it to do whatever it wanted with us. It just disappeared into thin air. Maya appeared out of nowhere and shot her laser gun towards our direction. It hit the robot in the back and it disappeared. Everything was turning to normal when Maya flashed light from her head and we teleported back to the headquarters.
"Wh..what was that,"I asked, trying to catch my breath.
Sam was just staring at me.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You.." and before he could finish the statement Maya cut him short. "Are fast."
******************
*At the Rebel Headquarters*
"Sir, I warned you about that," Maya almost screamed at him. "If I had not got there in time, who knows what would have happened."
"What is she talking about," Sam asked.
Koyala gave out a sigh before giving out a response.
"Well, we thought we had contained the robot and made it ours. So we wanted to see if indeed that was true. I thought it better to use it as surveillance on you out there instead of having to give my soldiers the task. Little did we know that it would send signals back to the Force when powered on and send its location to them. I'm really sorry, I really am."
"As if sorry would have brought us back to life had we died," frothed Sam as he turned to leave Koyala's office. Kran put his hand on Sam's shoulder to stop him from leaving but he twisted his hands and warned him not to touch him again. Koyala nodded his eyebrows to signal that he would be allowed to pass.
I just stood there. I didn't know what to say. We had no shirts on. Maya brought in two robes and asked to be given some time with Koyala. I had to go look for him. Sam was stupid when angry. Back at home when his brother annoyed him he would pack a lot of rocks and pebbles in a bag then head at the back of their home and throw them at the log the father had not used during the charcoal making process. Two meters away from the office, I met Sam coming towards me. Not angry any more. Something that surprised me. "Junior, you should see this," he pulled me over as he led me into a certain room I hadn't been in before. Before we could even get inside, something lifted us off the ground and away from the door into another room.
"You shouldn't be there," the lady Myozolan told us, "you don't want to get on his nerves."
Almost immediately, Maya got in. "You guys should go now before they start worrying about you." And with that, her third eye glowed and we were back at Jumia Hotel, in the washrooms. We dashed out immediately to see what was happening.
"I can't believe you guys have been in there all along. Mustafa wants everybody back in the vehicle, if we want to make a stop at the supermarket." Felix was hurt that we had left him behind. If only he knew where we had been.