I've decided that you need to call me big sis from now on and I will call you little bro" Jania directed her comment towards Null and Infy.
"Why we aren't related and you aren't my sister" Null was confused by the shift in conversation.
"We are both children of the super-soldier program, so I consider us to be siblings, we had no other family" replied Jania, thinking about family made her depressed, she had witnessed how Chris and Lisa interacted and realised how much she had missed growing up. Even the boys had more than her with their relationship with Zero.
"ok Big sis but does that make Chris big bro?" asked Null
"No, no, no he can't be our brother, as he is my boyfriend and that would be weird"
Null has a perplexed "but aren't brothers and boyfriends the same thing, you love both of them right?"
Chris couldn't help but chuckle at the interaction. He then tried to explain to Null and Infy about relationships, couples and the different kinds of love but none of it made sense to the boys' so he just gave up.
"I guess you will know when you are older," said Chris.
"But I am older, you said I was now 12 years old" Chris had been going through Bolat intelligence reports and had finally worked out the date on Earth. Without access to Earth's information net and proper day/night cycles, time had blended together for the children and they hadn't realised how much time had passed.
Chris and Jania were now both 17, Null and Infy were now 12 accounting for their accelerated growth. Chronologically Jania was only 14 and Infy 8 but both had their age accelerated from birth. It had become accepted practice within humanity just to refer to the accelerated age as a person age.
Chris was feeling sorrowful. "You know I found out from the intelligence report that the Youth Soldier Competition starts this week, and it would've been the last one that I and Jania could compete in. We could have dominated it."
Infy had a surprising suggestion
"Then let's go watch it, we can pretend we are testing the equipment for The Eous"
"No, mum would never allow it, we aren't allowed to interact with humans it the rules of the council" Chris was intrigued by the idea but knew it couldn't happen.
"what about my mission?" asked Jania.
"Well Littleman said that it would take a week for all the resources to be gathered for fabrication of the Eous, so as long as we are back in a week it should be fine"
Littleman was the nickname for Unit2317 that Null had come up with. The group had been neglecting its resource collection lately mainly because someone had to man the collection drone. Unit2317 had volunteered to automate their collection drones but even then some of the resources required by the boys to fabricate the Eous were located quite far away from the chariot. This placed them inside the council sensor zone so they couldn't just jump to the location. therefore it would take time to get them.
"You know he hates that name right, but how would we get there?" Jania was starting to warm up to the idea of sneaking out and meeting some humans. She had missed social interactions.
Infy had some ideas on how to get to mars "we would just have to sneak in using the current Eous, we need to avoid detection but once there it shouldn't be a problem to blend in." He had hoped that if they did go it couldn't be worst than the last time they visited mars.
"We can't go, you have to think of the consequence if we are detected. Just give it up already" Chris saw himself as the only mature one in the group. He did want to go to mars but it just wasn't worth the risk.
"Stop being a sourpuss, if we are careful we won't get caught, surely you want to see other humans as well. As much as I like little bro, you and Lisa. I want to talk to some other humans" replied Jania
Her argument started to sway Chris, but he recovered and remained steadfast against it as he knew that consequences outweighed the benefits. The last two times Chris didn't think about all the consequences people got hurt.
Null, Infy and Jania couldn't reasonably argue with Chris, he was correct, but that didn't mean he was right. Why should they always follow the rules? It seems no matter what they did there was someone higher up telling them what they could and couldn't do. They argued for a while with most of the arguments boiling down to "but I wanna" and "too dangerous".
Later that night Infy and Null still couldn't get the idea out of their heads. There was something more than curiosity driving them, it was the same feeling they had about going to planet Delphi. They weren't sure if it was the universe, or someone else directing them in a direction.
They spend the rest of the night coming up with a plan. They wanted to limit the chances of exposure and didn't want to make the same mistake as last time and attract too much attention with their technology. They secretly send out a stealth drone to mars it would take 2 days to arrive. This stealth drone had a return communication device onboard and an anti-field shield device.
The boys' were counting on the anti-field shield to protect them from being detected by council scanners so that they could just teleport in and then hopefully out when they wanted to leave. Null and Infy didn't tell Jania or Chris about the plan but had already decided to bring them along as well.
The boys' decided it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. They had decided to travel light, no suits, spells or weapons. The only thing they would be taking was an emergency recall crystal and an anti-field personal shield that would teleport them back to the golden chariot.
Two days later they were training together when Null got the communication from the stealth drone that it had infiltrated the location where the youth soldier competition would be held. The boys' quickly went into action and invited both Jania and Chris to a VR competition as a ruse to get them in the same room.
"Big sis, Chris come on hurry up" Null excitedly ran up to the two of them and held both of their hands
"oh someone keen to get their butt kicked by their big sister" Just as Jania had finished speaking the scenery changed.
"Surprise!" Null and Infy were absolutely beaming on the other side of the mental link. They quickly bent down and took out the anti-field spell crystal before sending the drone back the golden chariot.
"What did you do!" Chris was livid, he could tell they were on mars, he was sure that the discussion on this front was done with. He now realised he could never fully predict what the twins would do.
"Yes! this is awesome, thanks bro"
"you don't understand this is the competitors' dome, not the visitor's dome. Only competitors are allowed to be here, we will be discovered and then what?" Chris wanted to cause physical harm to the two of them for being so stupid. His brain was working overtime on how to get out of this predicament.
"That ok, there won't be problems if the locals discover us. Only if the council does. So I developed these anti-field devices to hide our fields and they won't find us" Infy was proud of his solution. He didn't know this was the competitor only dome but that was ok he was sure they would be fine.
"You don't think Unit2317 is not already reporting to the council we have left, and what about your tracking band"
"oh I forgot about the band," said null
Jania slapped him on the back of his head.
"You idiot, anyway what done is done, let us go exploring while we can
They walked around the dome without a care in the world, they had assumed if they got caught they would just recall back to the golden chariot and take the lecture that was surely waiting for them.
Chris had to admit that even if he wasn't happy about how he got here, being here did bring back fond memories. He wasn't sure if meeting Null and Infy was a blessing or not. He couldn't help by think of what his life would have been like without them. He would be finishing the officer course now and starting his career. He would have been a real competitor in this competition and if he did well he would have got scholarships to the higher level education centres.
It didn't take long until security found them, which wasn't unexpected so they had a plan. The plan was to let Chris talk and for everyone else to be quiet, which was easy for the mute Null. They had spent so much time around his communication drone or his mental link they often forgot he couldn't physically speak.
"Halt, Where are your badges?" they were being questioned by a rather intimidating security guard.
"We weren't given badges, we had only just arrived," replied Chris he was putting on his best innocent act.
"There is no way in without a badge, how did you get in here" demanded the security guard, he had already called in for backup.
"Uhm, we were dropped off here by our shuttle, sorry we don't know a lot about mars as we are from the Kuiper belt. is that not how we should have entered?" Chris believed he was putting on the best performance of his life.
The guard wasn't buying the act at all but had been commanded to his superior to take them to processing.
"Let's get to processing and see if you are competitors"
The three decided to play along for as long as possible to see what would happen.