Quitting was not an option anymore for the One Minuters as after the damage caused to the stadium, The Command had destroyed an under-construction flyover, a supermarket and a local bus stop. 

Questions regarding The Command were finally answered and the One Minuters were told that the evil power was like a parasite that fed on anxiety, fear and sorrow; it had never killed anyone though.

Qualifying perfectly as a host to it was little Keith, not just because it was easy to make a child believe in certain things but also because of the history.

“Quelle histoire?” Evelyn popped the question in French as she had been preparing for her upcoming foreign language certification. 

Quicksand engulfing her would not have worried Beth as much as hearing The Voice say, “Well, you see, The Command had been using Keith’s mom Quincy as a host since she was seven years old!” 

Quietness can often be more disturbing than noise; everyone gave her space as a shocked Beth quietly tried to make sense of it all.

Questions, a lot of them, had to be answered by her ex-husband and Keith’s father Rohit – Did Quincy disappear because of The Command? Did Rohit know about the superpowers and the looming danger? Did he part ways with Beth to keep Grace away from all of this?

Quincy was always a mystery as Rohit never shared much about her except that she left them after Keith’s first birthday.

Quite maturely, while Beth was lost in her thoughts, the younger One Minuters were marking the places destroyed by The Command on a map and that’s when they noticed that the route created by those places led to the farmhouse mentioned by Beth – the one where Keith stayed. 

Thanking my AtoZ writing group of women who helped me sail through the Q post today – Afshan, Deepa, Ranjana, Jayashree, Renu, Hema and Aparna 😇

The story continues tomorrow in the next post. Did you notice that I managed to start each sentence of this chapter of the story with the letter Q (I have managed to do the same from the B letter post)! This is my 17th post for this year’s A to Z Challenge (#atozchallenge). Head to my previous posts to read the entire story.
Read all my posts for the challenge in the A to Z links below:
A ➡ B ➡ C ➡ D ➡ E ➡ F ➡ G ➡ H ➡ I ➡ J ➡ K ➡ L ➡ M ➡ N ➡ O ➡ P ➡ Q ➡ R ➡ S ➡ T ➡ U ➡ V ➡ W ➡ X ➡ Y ➡ Z