THE ZILLIONAIRES XIX

"Look Keith, I’m going to beat you. I’m a robot, remember? I studied every code for every game in the world that’s been written!" Ryan said, "And I’ve found some no-one even knows about except for me and you, like this one." He pushed a couple of buttons and ‘BOOM!’ Keith’s arm blew off!

"Ha ha ha!" Ryan laughed.

Keith’s face was red with anger. "Arggggggggg!" He yelled. "I’m gonna change your system so I can beat you on any game!"

They had been playing "R. S. C.", a game that they had made when they were younger. Ryan and Keith had been doing the Multi-Player game against each other.

"Ho ho ho!" Ryan laughed long and hard until he said, "That’s the twentieth time today."

Keith stormed away, wishing that he had never, ever built Ryan.

"I can tell what you’re thinking Keith." Ryan said.

Keith was shocked. "I didn’t program you to do that."

"I programmed myself to do that." Ryan said back.

Great. Keith thought, A robot that can read my thoughts. I wish he was dead.

"I wouldn’t think that kind of stuff if I were you, Keith."

"Ha, try and stop me!"

"Fine. I’ll see you tonight after devotions."

That night, after Keith had finished his devotions with his family, he thought about what Ryan had said: Fine. I’ll see you tonight after devotions.

The words kept echoing through his head until his wife Allison said, "Keith? What’s wrong?"

"Wha-? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking." he replied, still thinking about those words.

"Are we still going to the party tonight at Ryan’s house?"

Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Ryan mouthing the word "Yes" through the window.

"Uh, sure. Yeah, we’re still going. When is it? I don’t remember."

"In ten minutes."

"What?! I’ve gotta go get ready!" With that he raced up to his room with all his suits. "Which one?" he asked himself aloud.

"How about this one?" a voice said from behind him.

"Who-?" He spun around and saw Ryan standing there! "Wh- What are you doing here?" He stammered.

"I’m picking out what you’re to wear tonight, got it?" Ryan said, holding out the clothes. His electronic eyes began to glow with red, blue, and yellow stars.

"Uh, sure."

"You better be there."

"I will, but let’s meet in my lab. I have stuff that I need to put in you."

"Like what?"

"A new Anti-Virus Scan. I invented it today. We can only use my lab because yours doesn’t have everything I need."

"Sure thing, Keith, but if you try any monkey business, I’ll be forced to hurt you bad."

"Okay, but let me go to the bathroom first."

He went to the bathroom and splashed some water onto his pale face. Ryan was acting very strange. Oh, well, it’s just my imagination. There’s nothing wrong with that android. Keith thought.

When Keith got to his lab, he saw Ryan on the table, already hooked up to his computers.

"Oh, good, you’re already hooked up to the computers. Now it’s time to put in the Virus Scan." Keith said.

"Finally." Ryan replied.

Keith took out a disk from his pocket and put it in the computer. "I’ll have to shut you down for less than a minute, or else it will short-circuit you and you’ll fry like a piece of bacon." Then he pressed a couple of buttons, and Ryan shut down.

Keith then started load the Virus-Scan. The Virus-Scan was a virus scan, but also a program so that Keith could shut Ryan down any time he wanted to. The controller was on his watch.

He knew Ryan would figure it out soon, so he put a pass-code on it, knowing it would take even Ryan a couple of decades to know that there was one and could over ride the system. Then there was the knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Keith asked.

"Who’s in there?" the person asked.

"Who are you?" Keith replied.

"I’m uh-, um-, I’m Ryan’s butler."

"Really?"

"Uh-, yeah. Who are you?"

"I’m Keith Matthew Carter, OKAY?! What business is it of yours?"

"Your wife wants you for a minute, Master Carter." the man said, without any sarcasm.

"Fine. I’ll be there in a second." Then he left the room.

When Keith got to the party, he looked for his wife.

"There you are!" she said when she saw him.

They started talking and Keith completely lost track of the time.

Then he heard his Radio Watch LX-5000 beep and say, "It’s nine o’clock."

"What?! Oh no! I’ve got to get back to Ryan. Bye Allison." He kissed her and went back to his lab.

When he got back to his lab, he was shocked to see that Ryan wasn’t there!

"RYAN! WHERE ARE YOU?!" He screamed.

No-one outside the door could hear him because the door was sound-proof.

Keith didn’t hear Ryan sneak up behind him. When Ryan touched him on the shoulder, Keith screamed louder than he thought possible!

"Sorry, did I scare you?" Ryan laughed.

"You scared the life outta me! You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Well, not sorry. You left me down here for an hour."

"Well, I lost track of the time."

"You still left me! PERIOD!"

"Fine. I’m sorry." Keith said, then under his breath he said, "Not."

"You better be quiet or something bad’s gonna happen to you."

"Yeah, right." he said sarcastically.

"BE QUIET!" Ryan screamed.

Keith fell back, stunned by the way Ryan just spoke. "I-I-I didn’t pr-pr-program you to do that." Keith stammered.

"I know. While you were gone some,, people came and, let’s say, they, re-arranged my system. HA-HA-HA!" Ryan cackled.

Keith was so shocked that he couldn’t move his legs to run. Ryan was coming towards him slowly.

When he got to Keith he slapped him in the face. Keith fell back, hurt. When he returned to his senses, he got up and ran out of the door. Keith could hear Ryan laughing an evil laugh behind him.

"Come back Keith, I won’t hurt you, HA HA HA!" Ryan shouted.

Keith went back to the main hall to get his wife. When he got her he almost had to drag her to the car with him. When he got to the car, he shoved her in the passenger seat, and he got in the driver’s seat.

When he turned on the Hydro Flyer, he sped home as fast as he could. (It only took him less than a minute to get there with the vehicle that he had made less than a year ago.)

On the way home, Allison had to ask, "All right, Keith. What in the world is going on here?! First you grab me, then you jerk me outside, shove me in the car, and start speeding home. What’s your problem?"

"Ry-Ryan was turned into a monster robot. When I was talking to you, the badguys changed his system. He tried to kill me!"

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"I told you! Ryan got changed by the badguys! They did something to him! I don’t know what, but now he’s trying to kill me!"

"Is this another one of your jokes?"

"No!" Keith screamed, skidding around a corner and knocking over mailboxes., "I promise you it’s true!"

"Okay, I believe you."

"Good, but we have to get home and get the kids."

"Why?"

"Because Ryan will kill them if we don’t get to them before he does!"

"Oh no!"

Keith flew through the gate to his house and skidded to a stop on the front steps.

"Allison, stay here while I get the kids."

"O-Okay."

Keith raced inside to find his kids. The first place he looked was the living room, because the kids had boughten some new movies to watch when their parents went to the party.

The T.V. was still on and the movie, " Death To Barney!", was still playing. Eric and Sarah weren’t there.

"They’re gone!" he cried. Then he heard a noise upstairs. "The kids!"

He ran into the extra-large elevator and pressed the television screen for the third floor.

When he got there, Keith raced to Sarah’s room and barged in. He turned on the light to see that Sarah wasn’t there. Then he found out that Eric was gone too, and the noise that he had heard was his cat, Stinkeroo.

He ran to the front door and was about to go outside when he saw a note taped to the back of the door. It said:

RYAN

"NOOOOOOOO!" Keith crushed the note in his hand and lit it on fire with his laser watch. He ran out to the Hydro Flyer and jumped in.

Keith flew to his base to save his family and Ryan!

When he got to his base, he saw the gate. It was totally destroyed! He drove over it, and down the long road. The road was surrounded on both sides by desert lands that stretched for miles, and illuminated by spotlights every hundred feet. The lights shone in every direction at lit up the entire base, which covered 5 square miles.

Keith got to the center of the base and looked at all of the buildings. They weren’t damaged.

On each side of the road the buildings stretched for 1,000 feet.

The base wasn’t in use and hadn’t been totally built yet. No one worked at the base, no one lived there. I fact, no-one ever went to the base. Only Ryan and Keith knew why. When they had started building the base 10 years before, someone had snuck in a ton of explosives. The explosives were put at the back of the base where some workers were building the artillery shelter. Somebody set off the explosives, killing two hundred men. That’s not why the base wasn’t used thought. It was because of something that happened later on. A few weeks after the explosion, workers kept claiming that the ghosts of the dead workers were roaming the base, searching for the person that killed them. Everyone quit working there, and the people who lived around the base moved away because the ghosts would go into their houses at night and ask if the person who killed them was there. The people where so scared that they left their houses and never went back. They say that the ghost were sometimes red or blue or even yellow and had skinless skulls with eyes hanging out and construction hats on. The bottom halves of them seemed to disappear into the air and they floated about a foot or two above the ground . Blood dripped from where their lower parts disappeared. People who went into the houses after the people moved out say that the blood was still there and reappeared every time someone tried to clean it.

The building that Keith wanted to go to was the Main Control Center. Ryan was most likely there. Little did he know, this was only the beginning of Ryan’s little game.

As he drove, he could see the ghosts floating around the base. Some where near, some where far away. A few even came up to the vehicle and clawed at the doors, trying to get in. Keith ignored them, knowing that they could hurt him and that they would disappear forever if they touched a living person. They could touch animals, which Keith and Ryan soon figured out. They would find mutilated bodies of animals everywhere on the base rotting in puddles of stagnant blood.

When he got to the control center, he used his tracker to see if anyone was there. He got a signal from inside.

Then he heard a scream from inside!

"OH NO! ALLISON!" Keith screamed.

He heard a muffled scream, then silence. He ran to the doors but they were locked. He then brought out his secret laseriser, and laserised the door. Then he tried to kick the door in but it was too strong, so he took out one of the power pills Ryan had made and ate it. He felt the power of ten-thousand men surge through him. He kicked the door so hard, all his power left, but the door flew into a window and shattered it and the whole wall into a million pieces, and kept on going for another few miles at 500 mph. Keith heard a cat screeching a little ways away. Dogs started barking and buildings collapsed. The ground was torn up and trees were cut down. Then he heard an old geezer shouting his head off. The geezer fired off some shots with a rifle. Then Keith heard police sirens and a building exploding. He saw a giant fireball far away. People started screaming. Ambulances wailed into the night and Keith could see their lights flashing. Cars crashed and blew up. A bridge got knocked down crushing a train underneath. Amazingly enough, no-one was hurt.

"Oops." Keith said.

Then he ran up the stairs as fast as he could, and ran into all the rooms and checked them for his family. He didn’t find them. Then he saw the note. It said:

Keith

You won’t find me,

I’ll find you,

Look around the sole in your shoe.

In there you might find a stupid clue.

He then looked in his shoe, and found another piece of paper. "Great," he muttered, "A treasure hunt."

The note said:

Where you check is where you find,

A note inside a house of kind.

No more clues, you’re on your own,

I won’t help you. You’re all alone.

He then left and check all the other houses on the deserted street. He used his scanner, and his sound amplifier on all the houses for a quicker search. He didn’t find anything in any of the houses except one.

He went to the door, and it was unlocked! He then went inside, and heard something from the top floor. He ran to the stairs and ran up them quickly, and went into the rooms. In the last room he checked, he found his daughter, Sarah, curled into a ball in the corner.

"SARAH!" Keith exclaimed.

"Uncle R-R-Ryan t-took M-Mom and Er-Eric t-to the de-deserted m-m-m-ovie theat-er-er." Sarah stammered.

"Okay. You stay here and I’ll go get them." He was hoping to make his daughter jump up and say something like, "Stay here!? No way, I’m going with you!" and that’s just about what she said.

"Fine," Keith said, acting sad, though not doing a very good job at it, "You can come."

Then they went to the car that Keith had brought, and sped to the theater.

When they got there Keith asked his daughter, "Where are they?"

She looked up at him with a grave expression, and said,

"I d-d-don’t know where they a-a-are."

"Okay. Just stay in the car, and I’ll go find your mom, and brother."

"Sure." She sounded really scared.

"Do you want to come with me?"

"Not really. I’ll stay here."

"Fine, I’ll go. Stay in the car."

Then Keith went into the building, and started searching.

"Ahhhh!! Somebody help me! Ahhhhhh!" someone cried from the room upstairs.

Keith raced up the stairs, only to find Ryan, holding a gun to Allison’s head.

"Let her go." Keith tried to sound tough, but Ryan could tell how scared he was. Ryan couldn’t help but laugh.

"I mean it!" Keith pulled out a 10,000 watt laser gun. "You shoot her, and I’ll shoot you." He pointed it at Ryan.

Ryan put Allison in front of him as a shield.

Keith knew he couldn’t get Ryan, so he set the gun on stun. He shot Allison. She fell to the floor, knocked out cold. She’d be that way for ten minutes. He aimed the gun at Ryan.

"NOOOO! Dad! NOOOO! Don’t shoot him!" someone screamed from behind Keith. It was Sarah.

She knocked the gun as he shot, so he just missed Ryan.

"WHAT!? Why’d you do that?" He screamed.

Sarah signaled Ryan, and he came over.

"Keith," he said laughing, "You didn’t figure it out did you?"

"Figure what out?" Keith said, pulling out another gun and aiming it at Ryan.

"Oh, that maybe this was all a big joke?"

"WHAT?!"

"That’s right.

"Where is Eric?"

"Gee, I don’t know, look behind you."

Keith turned around and screamed. There was a fresh skeleton hanging on the wall. When he turned around again to kill Ryan, he saw all four of them laughing.

"I’m gonna kill you, Ryan! Do you know what you put me through?"

"No, but I’ll bet it was fun."

With that, Keith tackled Ryan and they both went to the floor and crashed through and fell trough all the floors until the reached the bottom. They fought for a couple of minutes, and then stopped. They were both laughing.

"Well," Ryan said, "Let’s go home."

Then they all went home for a good night’s rest.