Jacob Llewellyn, a 10-year-old with striking blue eyes, short green hair, and mismatched orange and green clothes, stumbles backward. He rubs his arm, glancing up to see Max Henry, a 16-year-old with short blue hair and piercing green eyes, looking around nervously.
"Hey, watch it! Are you alright?"
"Sorry. I—uh—didn’t see you there," Max mumbles, glancing over his shoulder as if expecting someone to follow.
"You look like you’re hiding from something," Jacob observes, lowering his voice. "Come on, let’s go to my secret hideout. It’s safer there."[/@ch_1_d]
Jacob leads Max up the creaky ladder, glancing around before closing the hatch. The air is thick with the scent of old wood and secrets.
"Why are we here?" Max asks, sinking into a beanbag chair, his knees jittering.
"Because I’m hiding, too," Jacob says, voice trembling with a mix of excitement and fear. "I stole my age swap machine back from the federal government."[/@ch_1_d]
Jacob[/@ch_1] as he paces. The machine, a jumble of wires and blinking lights, sits wrapped in a blanket in the corner.]
"I heard some agents talking. They said they make weird, bad policies and then pick a random 10-year-old boy, swap his age and eye color, and send him to jail instead of themselves. They were going to do it to me, but they lied and said the machine blew up so I couldn't use it."
Max frowns, his gaze flicking to the machine. "Wait, you were undercover?"
"Yeah," Jacob admits, lowering his voice. "I was pretending to be a 10-year-old girl named Sarah Jones. I took the machine while in disguise."[/@ch_1_d]
Jacob[/@ch_1] crouches beside the machine, his hands trembling as he checks its connections.]
"After I got the machine as Sarah, I ran to the car. But here’s the thing—the only person who could drive was Sarah, because they accidentally gave her a license. No one knows Sarah is me," he whispers, pride and anxiety mixed in his tone.
"So you escaped as a 10-year-old girl with a driving license and now you’re back as yourself? That’s... actually genius," Max says, a slow smile spreading across his face.
"I just needed to make sure no one could use the machine for their own plans. I couldn’t let them hurt anyone else," Jacob replies, determination hardening his eyes.
"You know, I was hiding too," Max admits after a long silence. "They said I knew too much. But maybe we can figure something out together."
"Yeah. Maybe we can," Jacob replies, offering a small, hopeful grin.
Outside, the city hums with secrets, but inside the treehouse, two unlikely friends hatch a plan, determined to outsmart the world that tried to trick them both.
