After the news report about Monica's sudden death, Justin went home feeling down. He sat on his bed looking down at the flash drive in his hand that she gave him. He started thinking to himself if it was just a coincidence or could Director Stone really be the man in the shadows.
Justin plugged the flash drive into his laptop although he was worried about what he would find. The flash drive was filled with files on his father and all the projects he worked on at H.T.I., most of which was centered on ways to cure incurable diseases. Most of the files were encrypted like Monica said they were. Justin used his knowledge of coding to begin decrypting the files.
"This is gonna take a while." said Justin a couple minutes later when he realized the decrypting progress was just at 1 percent. To his surprise, his doorbell rang.
"Hey cuz." said Chloe after Justin opened his front door and saw her alongside Max and Kade.
"Hey, what are you guys doing here?" asked Justin as they let themselves in.
"The better question is what are you doing here on a Saturday?" Kade countered.
"I'm not following." Justin spoke, confused.
"He means you should be out having fun." Max elaborated.
"Yeah, I still think we should all go to the beach." Kade insisted.
"Kade, you're not hell bent on us going to the beach just so you can see me and Amethyst in swimsuits are you?" Chloe asked him with a raised eyebrow.
"What,…of ... of course not." Kade responded shakily.
Chloe scoffed in disbelief to Kade's response.
"Damn!, she's on to me." Kade said to himself quietly as he turned around.
"He knows we can still hear him right?" Chloe asked.
"At this point I doubt he knows anything at all." Max replied nonchalantly.
"Well it is hot out today so maybe the beach isn't a bad idea after all." Chloe voiced.
"Sorry guys, but I can't." Justin declined.
"Why? you have other plans?" Max inquired.
"Yeah, I do." Justin replied.
"Amethyst is gonna be there." Chloe reminded him in an attempt to get him to agree .
"Oh I forgot to tell you, I ran into her this morning, she said she won't be able to make it today cause the planning and event committee needs her help to prepare for the winter dance." Max relayed to them.
Justin told them all about what happened yesterday after he left them after school, from meeting up with Miles Drake to Monica giving him the flash drive, which was probably the reason behind her unfortunate death, or murder more than likely.
"So let me get this straight, you think Mr. Stone, Amethyst's father, is the guy in the shadows?" Kade asked in disbelief.
"Yeah, I mean I'm starting to believe." Justin answered honestly.
"We are talking about the same guy who is creating super villains, tried to kill your mom, kidnapped you to harvest your energy for whatever nefarious plan he has?" Max further inquired to be sure.
"I know it's hard to believe, I don't even want to believe it myself either." Justin replied.
"Plus, Monica said just talking to me was dangerous and she also warned me not to trust him and he overheard it and now she ends up dead? she just dies suspiciously? I just don't think it's a coincidence." Justin began explaining the reasons for his claims.
"But we'll know more when the other files are finished decrypting." He continued.
The three of them became silent as they realized that Justin might have a solid theory. They all followed Justin upstairs to his room so that they could also see what was on the flash drive. There were so many documents on the flash drive, Justin was reminded that this would take a long time.
Before Justin could even continue going through the files, Kade noticed a police car pulling up into the driveway.
"Kade?, what is it?" asked Justin.
"Five-O." Kade replied, referring to the police officers.
"What?!" Justin exclaimed as he walked towards the window.
"Seriously?!" Justin grumbled in annoyance as he saw officers that he recognized from his run-ins with Captain Sting.
"You need to get out of here quick, and Chloe should go with you since Captain Sting is already suspicious of her." Max told Justin.
"What're you and Kade gonna do?" asked Justin.
"We'll distract them." Max replied.
"We will?" Kade asked, feeling the pressure of the situation.
"Just get out of here." said Max.
While the officers were knocking at the front door, Justin and Chloe were trying to slip out the back door.
"New York Police Department (NYPD), open up." One of the officers said as he kept banging on the front door.
Max opened the door to try distracting them as his friends escaped.
"Good Morning, we're looking for Justin Jackson." said one of the officers.
Max began to do some form of sign language, pretending to be deaf.
"Oooookay!... you, where's Justin Jackson?" The other officer started talking to Kade realizing it would've been a waste of time to talk to Max.
"Um… ¡No hablo Inglés!" Kade replied in Spanish.
Both officers looked at each other confused as they were unsure about what to do about this hopeless situation.
Meanwhile Justin and Chloe managed to get out of the house and made a run for it down the street until they were far enough away.
"Honestly, why can't Captain Sting just leave me alone?!" Justin asked angrily.
"I know right, you'd think he'd have something better to do." said Chloe.
"So how do you think we should kill time?" Chloe asked after a moment of silence.
"I don't know but we should….." Justin began but he was interrupted by the sirens of a police car pulling up beside them.
"Speak of the devil…" said Justin with an indignant look on his face as he saw who was in the driver's seat.
"We need to talk, now" said Captain Sting.
"We don't need to do anything, come on Chloe, we're leaving." said Justin as he took his cousin's hand.
"Look, we can do this the easy way which would be you getting in the car take a drive with me down to the precinct and I won't involve your new friends, they seem nice by the way; or we can do this the hard way and none of us get want that." said Captain Sting.
Justin didn't want Chloe and his friends to get more involved in his mess, so he made a decision.
"Chloe, go back to my house and stay there with Max and Kade," Justin instructed.
"What?!No way." said Chloe, who was against the idea.
"It's fine, I'll meet up with you and the guys back at the house," said Justin.
"O… okay." Chloe agreed reluctantly as Justin took a seat in the police cruiser and drove off.
HALF AN HOUR LATER
Captain Sting brought Justin back to the interrogation room so he could question him some more.
"Captain Sting, we really need to stop meeting like this," said Justin showcasing his witticism.
"Well then, if you'd just stop lying to me and tell me the truth we wouldn't have to." Captain Sting rebutted as he took a seat at the other side of the table.
"Lying about what exactly?" asked Justin.
"You might not be that metahuman that's been circulating around lately but I'm positive that you know more than you're letting on." Captain Sting replied.
Even though Justin was able to throw the police off his trail with the help of Jones, Captain Sting's suspicions of Justin proved unwavering.
"Are you doing this because you genuinely think I'm hiding something from you?... or are you doing this out of hatred for me because you still think my father and I are responsible for your wife's death." Justin asked.
There was a moment of silence after that remark making it evident that Justin had hit a nerve.
"Both." Captain Sting answered coldly.
"Well, at least you're honest about it." said Justin.
"Personal feelings aside, I think you might be able to help me." said Captain Sting as he took out a file jacket and placed it on the table and pushed it towards Justin.
"Me help you?" said Justin in surprise as he opened the file jacket.
Inside it were pictures of dead bodies with blood coming from their mouths, noses, eyes and ears.
"Those are some victims that disappeared suspiciously and we found their bodies like that, and that was twelve years ago, around the same time as the 7/15 incident." Captain Sting explained.
"And these are the victims that we've found recently, notice any similarities?" He asked as he took out another file jacket and gave them to Justin.
Justin noticed that both sets of victims had the same bleeding characteristics, he even recognized one of the victims from the recent pile, the woman that had her mouth covered when he was being held captive by Otto and the shadow man.
"My theory is that if whatever happened to the victims from twelve years ago is connected to the 7/15 incident, then these recent victims might be proof that it's all happening again, not to mention all these random people like Brody getting powers; and I also think you can give me more information, even help me stop it ." Captain Sting explained.
"This is Monica Parker, she was found dead this morning, you know her?, you should since H.T.I's surveillance shows that you're probably the last person to see her alive, which leads me to wonder if she's somehow involved in all of this, which could be why she was killed." Captain Sting asked as he placed a picture of her on the table.
Justin looked away from the picture and refused to say anything.
Before Captain Sting could even ask anymore questions, Sarah barged in most upset.
"Sorry Captain, she's really strong for a woman." said an officer surprised that she overpowered him.
"Who the hell do you think you are?, dragging my son down here without any cause." Sarah spat about to blow a fuse.
"The police Captain." Captain Sting answered sarcastically.
"As for the cause, I believe both you and your son have information about why all these people are disappearing and about why there are super-powered individuals running around in my city." Captain Sting explained.
"Why?, because of my dead husband?" Sarah asked while glaring at him.
"Yes, and I thought that out of the two of you, I'd have a better chance getting him to to talk to me" Captain Sting answered.
"Where's your proof that we know anything at all?, or do you make it a habit to make arrests without any evidence, Captain?" Sarah asked with a bit of sass.
"No ma'am, cause this isn't an arrest, just asking him to tell me what he knows, he is free to leave if he wishes ... but I'd prefer if he stays." said Captain Sting.
"I don't give a damn about what you'd prefer. Come on Justin, let's go." Sarah insisted.
Justin got up and walked towards the door before his mother decided to go super ninja on them.
"Hey Justin, I know that you don't like me, and honestly I don't care much for you either, but I have a feeling that another incident is going to happen just like 7/15,... .or worse; so if you know anything, anything at all, now's the time to say something." said Captain Sting.
Justin paused for a second, then looked at his mother and then looked back at him.
"Sorry, I don't know anything." said Justin as he and his mother walked away.
A FEW MINUTES LATER
"I still can't believe that he did this, he's lucky that I didn't carry my weapons." Sarah ranted as she was driving Justin home.
Sarah's phone began ringing, So Justin picked it up noticing Jones on her caller ID as he gave it to her.
"Yeah Jones." Sarah answered.
"What?!, right now?,... fine, I'm on my way." Sarah said annoyed.
"Sorry hun, but I've got to make a little detour before we go home, but it won't take long ." Sarah informed her son.
"Yeah that's fine." Justin replied, turning his attention to the window.
A few minutes later, they arrived at the abandoned building and took the secret entrance to the A.D.A.
"Okay, what's the big emergency, did you find out something that would help us catch Otto?" Sarah asked Jones as she walked through the elevator doors with Justin not far behind her.
"Yeah, we have." Jones replied.
As she and Jones went somewhere to talk, Justin decided to snoop around Director Stone's office hoping to find something out about his father and more importantly, confirm whether or not he was really the man in the shadows.
After almost thirty minutes of snooping and not finding anything remotely helpful, he was almost ready to give up and go home, until he came across something weird. A strange looking stone-like object which for some reason reminded him of the pendant he wore all the time which later turned out to be a piece of the cube.
"What is this?" Justin wondered as he took it up and began analyzing it.
Suddenly, Justin heard Director Stone making his way to the office with his heightened hearing. So he quickly hid the stone.
"Justin?, what are you doing here?" Director Stone asked as he saw Justin sitting down.
"Um,… I was waiting for you." said Justin trying to look natural.
"Waiting?, for what?" Director Stone asked as he proceeded to take up what he came for.
"Um,... well you said you'd explain how it is that you have powers, you remember, the night you and mom rescued me." Justin came up with a lie quickly.
"Oh, that's right, sorry Justin but now isn't a good time to talk about it." said Director Stone.
"Yeah, I totally understand, some other time then," Justin agreed, feeling uncomfortable around him.
"Justin, is everything alright?" Stone asked.
"Yeah,… everything's cool; I should get out of here, see ya." said Justin as he exited the room.
Justin went to his mother to let her know that he was leaving.
"Oh sorry kiddo, this is taking longer than I thought it would." said Sarah.
"It's cool, you look pretty busy, so I'll just fly home," Justin spoke, wanting badly to leave.
"Okay but make sure that no one sees you, I'm serious okay." Sarah urged him.
"Yes ma'am." He said as she hugged him goodbye.
Justin flew off as soon as he made it outside of the A.D.A. While he was flying, he reached into his pocket and took out the object that he found in Director Stone's office.
"Now, time to find out what you are." Justin said to himself.
MEANWHILE
Otto was wandering the streets of Harlem heading towards their nearest base to seek refuge after the other base was destroyed in the last fight. He was wearing a long sleeve trench coat concealing his missing right arm for which he managed to stop the bleeding.
Otto finally reached his destination. He opened the door and was surprised to see that the man in the shadows was waiting for him.
"Well Otto, it seems things got interesting while I was away." said the shadow man sarcastically, trying to mask the fact that he was furious.
"Not only is the base destroyed, but one of the henchmen told me that the pod was destroyed in the fight and you let the boy escape." He continued with his voice rising with anger as he walked towards Otto.
"I know sir, but at least I managed to protect the storage unit with the energy we acquired from him so even though he escaped , that amount of energy should serve us for a good long while." Otto quickly explained to try and soothe the man's anger.
" I can build another pod and then we'll be back on track,…..it will just take a while." Otto added as he hinted at his missing arm from the elbow down.
"What happened to your arm?" the shadow man asked.
"Someone came to rescue him wearing a black suit and mask wielding a sword. I couldn't even tell if it was a man or woman, but whoever it was the person cut my arm clean off. Plus the A.D.A showed up as well." Otto explained.
"It seems that the boy has allies that we weren't aware of." said the shadow man.
"And to make matters worse, it seems that Monica had files about the 7/15 incident on her laptop." He continued.
"She could've divulged information to him, if so he could find out the truth about everything, but I thought all of those files were destroyed." said Otto.
"That's my concern, if she gave him anything then I'll take care of it, in the meantime, you should get started on building another pod, I'll order the henchmen to provide you with assistance so you should finish quicker this time… even though you are short handed at the moment, pun intended." said the shadow man.
"Right,... that's really funny." said Otto sarcastically once the shadow man was out of ear shot.
ELSEWHERE, HALF AN HOUR LATER
''Unbelievable, It's still decrypting?!, what's taking so long?!" said Justin impatiently as he sat on his bed.
"I guess we'll just have to wait a little longer, we just have to wait a bit more," Max voiced.
"Hey Justin, what's that?" Kade questioned as he was directing their attention to the table next to him.
"Oh, I found it in Uncle Jayce's desk, it reminded me of the pendant I used to wear so I kinda took it cause I wanted to find out what it is, plus I thought it could even be a clue." Justin explained.
"That's kind of a long shot, don't you think?" Chloe asked skeptically.
"Maybe, but it's the only thing I could find in his office that looked like it could be something, but as far as I can tell it doesn't do anything, I guess I could be wrong." said Justin as he picked up the object.
Justin noticed a smudge in the center of the object and attempted to use his thumb to rub it off.
"Ow!" said Justin in pain as the object pricked his thumb causing Jystin to drop the object on the ground. Justin looked at his thumb and noticed that it was bleeding and looked at the object and saw that some of his blood was on it.
"What the hell?!" said Justin as he picked it up off the ground.
"What happened?" asked Kade.
"This thing just pricked my finger." Justin replied.
Justin looked back at his thumb and realized that the wound had already healed and was about to wipe his blood from the object when it suddenly started glowing.
"What's happening?" asked Chloe as the glow kept getting brighter and brighter and illuminating the room.
"Just get rid of it." Max urged him.
When the bright light subsided, they were all gone, it was like they disappeared into thin air.
To their surprise, they found themselves teleported to a different location. They reappeared in mid air and began falling immediately. Luckily they all fell into a body of water except for Justin, who was floating above the water's surface.
"What the hell just happened?" asked Kade.
"It looks like we were teleported." Max answered with a leveled head.
"Teleported to where exactly?" asked Chloe worriedly.
"Hold on a sec." said Justin as he pulled out his phone to pinpoint where they were.
"We're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," said Justin, surprised.
"Great, that's just great, we're soaking wet, stuck in the middle of the ocean, miles away from home." Kade grumbled, letting out his frustration.
"Well look at the bright side, you were insisting that we go to the beach," Max jeered.
"Very funny." said Kade as he glared at him.
The object forced itself out of Justin's hand after it began glowing again.
"What's it doing?" asked Kade as they stared at it floating in mid air as if it had a mind of its own.
"Looks like it wants to go somewhere." said Max as it started to move around.
The object then went under water and Justin proceeded to follow it after he took a deep breath. Justin followed it all the way to the ocean floor as the light it was giving off illuminated the surrounding area. It buried itself beneath the seabed and Justin lost sight of it.
Justin waited a bit hoping something would happen but nothing seemed to be happening and he couldn't hold his breath any longer so he decided to call it quits and began swimming back to the surface, when suddenly he heard rumbling, the ocean floor started to crack and a huge structure began rising to the surface lifting Justin with it.
"He's been down there for too long hasn't he?" said Chloe, starting to worry.
"Yeah, he has, I wonder if something happened to him." Max began speculating.
Suddenly, the structure rose above the water, it was some kind of strong hold, and there Justin was, rising up along with it.
"Wow!, what is that ?" Chloe asked in amazement.
"I don't know, but that's where I'm going." said Kade as he began swimming towards it and they followed.
Justin and his friends started walking towards what they believed could be a door. As soon as they got close, the object revealed itself in the wall beside the door. It quickly scanned Justin.
"Access granted, welcome Justin Jackson." said an A.I. voice as the door opened automatically.
"Wow!" exclaimed Kade in awe as they stepped inside.
"It's some kind of base." Chloe stated.
Although this structure has probably been deep under water for who knows how long, the inside looked maintained enough.
They all began snooping around and Justin came across a few old photographs, but the only one that really grabbed his attention was a picture of his father holding a baby Justin in his arms, which led to them realizing that this place must've belonged to his Dad.
"Cute baby picture." said Chloe trying to lighten up the mood, realizing that the picture had triggered Justin.
"Heh, thanks," said Justin.
Justin picked up the rest of the photos to go through them later.
"What are DVDs doing under water?!" asked Kade, drawing the others' attention.
"Only one way to find out what's on them." said Justin as he decided to take discs with him to watch them at home hoping that they'd help him
They continued to snoop around, finding certain gadgets and machines that his father must've invented, just lying around the place, until they were eventually ready to leave. Justin took the stone out of the wall and the base immediately began sinking back to where it came from as they held onto Justin as he floated above the water, trying to avoid getting soaked again.
"So how are we gonna get out of here exactly?" asked Kade.
"I have an idea about that." said Justin as he placed his finger on the stone hoping it would prick his finger again but nothing happened.
"I don't know why it's not working, I was hoping this thing would take us back home," said Justin.
After Justin said that, the stone began to glow again like the first time, and just like before, they disappeared and found themselves back in Justin's room.
"We're back, it worked!" Kade let out, surprised.
"This thing must've heard me." Justin said to himself.
"Why's my room all messy?, and what happened to my laptop?" asked Justin when his laptop was smashed to pieces.
"It looks like someone was looking for something, do you notice anything missing?" asked Max.
Justin looked around for a minute and realized that there was something missing.
"Yeah, the flash drive Monica gave me, it's gone." Justin revealed.
"Um guys, I think you should take a look at this." said Chloe as she drew their attention to the wall behind them.
There was a message on the wall that said stop digging or else whatever happens to them is on you. Under the message were pictures of his mother, Max, Chloe and Kade.
They stared at the ominous message on the wall in shock. Now Justin had to play his cards very carefully, now that he realizes that his every move is being watched.
~KEOKROSTOS