A/N: I'M SORRY! I updated really super late! I know it, and I'm sorry, but I just started driving, and it's really hard to not take out mailboxes on the side of the road, or the odd pedestrian, and they have us go at it for an hour and a half at my Driver's Ed place… DX And I've had a CRAPLOAD of homework! And, 98.7% is from Science and English put together, and Science is one of my worst subjects, so I've been pretty busy. But…. I WILL get another chapter up this weekend. I promise. Why? You'll see.
And to my family, who really wanted to read my story…. HI! (I'm a lot spazzier on the internet…)
One last thing: Just so everybody knows, I have anonymous reviews enabled. So, if you don't have an account, you can still review. And I would really appreciate your reviews! To my family: Please review! Just click the little button at the bottom that says review! K, thx.
Now, on with the show! Or, story… Whatever.
DISCLAIMER: HEY! GUESS WHAT? I still don't own anything.
Ch. 8 Issues…
Solomon's POV
I should have been suspicious from the beginning; Naomi never got sick enough to not come into work, much less leave early. And then two days later, Aaron disappeared. He wasn't answering either of his phones, he wasn't responding to any emails, and when I had my agents break into his apartment, he wasn't there. After a thorough search, it was obvious that he had made preparations to fall off the map for a while. After searching through Naomi's also empty apartment, we reached a similar conclusion. We put the pieces together and realized that the two of them were up to something. Whenever Aaron and Naomi were involved in something, it meant Sive, and when something involved Sive, I was interested.
I gave Aaron's computers to my personal IT division so they could hack into them and show us what he was doing. His home computer showed a possibility of where they were going: Alberdeen, a small city about a two days' drive away. There wasn't much there, but I knew it meant something to Aaron; it was the place his mother grew up in, it was the place I met her in, it was the place we got married in, it was where he was born and raised, it was where Sive was born, and it was where life as he knew it was ripped apart by yours truly.
Almost all of the others immediately thought that that was where he was going, but they forgot that I taught him everything he knows. He was smarter than that, though; I taught him how to lay a false trail, and he obviously remembered it.
At that point, all of the people I had involved in The Project were in our wing of the building, and that was about 350 people. I made sure we had our own private wing, and only those I had involved in The Project had access to it. Even Aaron didn't have access, and he was my right hand man whenever the company was involved, but I didn't put him in The Project for a reason. He was already more involved than he knew, and he didn't even know it existed.
The Project was my own creation: It was my means for carrying out my plan, which wouldn't go into action until I got that key. I knew from the beginning that I couldn't do the job alone, so I made many promises of money, power, and control. But mostly money. Eventually, after I received total control of the company when my father died, I started The Project. Unfortunately, we hadn't made much progress, and we had started almost ten years ago.
At that point, we were all in the lab, watching the large screen as a group of hackers from The Project's IT group made their way through Aaron's firewall on his work computer. I was pacing, the hackers were hacking, and everyone else was just trying to stay out of my way. I was anxious, and not without good reason: I had taught Aaron everything he knew about manipulation, keeping the law on your side, how to get what you want, etc, but when it came to technology, he taught himself all of that, and he knew more than anyone else in the whole company. After factoring in his newfound technopathy powers from the meteor, I was surprised that none of the others were as on edge as I was.
"Almost there, sir," said one of the hackers. "Just a little more code to write, and then we'll have everything on the computer."
"I'll believe it when I see it," I growled.
We all watched as numbers and letters flashed by on the screen, when it suddenly went blank. I thought something had gone wrong, but the hackers had relieved, almost joyous looks on their faces. The rest of us were confused, until the screen lit up again showing the desktop image of Aaron's computer; a partially underwater image showing fish, and a small island with a palm tree, a boat, and a man fishing in said boat, with various icons dotting the screen. It was the standard screen saver image of all of the company computers.
"Excellent," I said, reading over the icons. "Go to the Personal Documents icon."
The hacker that was currently in control clicked in the icon. And he clicked it again. And again. Nothing happened.
"What the heck?" mumbled the hacker.
Then, the strangest thing any of us had ever seen started happening; the icons started falling to the bottom of the screen. We just stared in shocked silence. When the screen saver fish went belly up and started floating to the top of the water, the hackers started panicking. They tried fixing it, but all of the computers showing Aaron's screen were locked, any other computers were unable to access it. The hackers were all still trying to fix it when the boat flipped, sending the fisherman into the water where he disappeared. The sky also turned red, and the clouds and sun disappeared. We all just stared in shocked silence, watching either the hackers run around like trapped mice, or the screen as the palm tree caught fire. Then, what was left of the mangled image looked as if it was melting, and it revealed a pre-recorded video of Aaron.
"Nice try, Dad," he said smugly. "But you'll have to do better than that. You're not stopping me this time, and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh, and here's a little goodbye gift."
His image disappeared and was replaced with the blue "your hard drive has just been wiped," screen. We were all in shock; Aaron had managed to outsmart me. That had never happened before.
Then, it got worse. All of the computers, showing Aaron's screen or not, closed everything and went to the desktop. Then, the icons started falling, the screen saver fish were now dead screen saver fish, and so on. All of the screens followed the show put on by Aaron to a T, except for the part showing the video. Eventually all of the hard drives were wiped, and my pager started going off like a machine gun. They were all messages from all around the company, and they were all the same; all of the computers in the building had been wiped by a screen saver fish killing, palm tree burning virus.
"Nice job, Aaron," I mumbled to myself. "Maybe I taught you a little too much."
xoxoxoxoxLexi's POV
I got to New Chicago at around three o'clock. The train station was in the Financial District, but I needed to get to the Navy District, and there was no way to do that using public transportation; the main part of the city really tried to separate itself from the Navy District to save face. Fortunately, Zadavia knew that, too, and got me a rental, which was waiting for me outside the station.
It was just a plain, old, grey-blue compact car. It wasn't really my style, but it was less likely to be stolen in that neighborhood.
I reached my hotel in about 45 minutes. The building itself wasn't all too pretty, and it wasn't much better on the inside, but I couldn't say that Zadavia didn't warn me. I checked in, got a key for a room on the fourth floor, and went upstairs.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; there was a double bed, an old TV, a small table with a fake floral arrangement, and a small bathroom. I was worried that there would be rats or something, but it was clean and cozy, if not a little cramped. And maybe a little too beige.
I set my bags down and flopped down on the bed. It was almost 4 o'clock at that point, and I already knew what I was going to do; call Ace and tell him I made it in one piece, find a place nearby to eat, and then turn in early. The next day would be awesome; I was finally going to meet Sive!
xoxoxoxoxLexi's POV
It was about 10:55, and after about 45 minutes of wandering around and getting bad directions from the locals, half of whom didn't even know they had a library, I had finally made it. There was no one around, and it was pretty quiet. It was also really dark out; there was a big storm that was supposed to start soon, and the clouds made it dark enough for the few operating streetlights to come on. I was just standing outside of the door, looking down one side of the street, waiting to see Sive.
"Hello, Lexi," said a voice behind me suddenly. I didn't hear anyone walk up behind me, but I knew who it was by the voice; it was a voice that I had hoped to never hear again, a voice that belonged to a certain E.T. in a tutu.
"Melvin?" I shouted, turning around to face him. He was about 5 feet away from me, floating in a Martian chariot led by his dog, Sergeant Sirius, at about face-level, which for him was 2 feet off the ground. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be on Mars?"
"And miss my chance for revenge? Not a chance!" he explained smugly. I bet he was smirking, too, but I couldn't exactly tell. "I've been waiting for months to get my chance! You destroyed two of my ships, and you actually thought you'd get away with it!"
"Well, considering how Ace managed to blow you up with your own bomb-"
"That was an accident!" he whined. "And besides; you're the one I want revenge on! You blew up my ships! And now I've got you all alone! Your friends can't help you here! Now, I can finally destroy you!"
I started to worry a little, but not much. "Oh, yeah? You and what army?" I asked smugly; I could take Melvin in a fight easily, and his robotic dog wasn't intelligent enough to be a worry.
He pointed behind me, and I turned around to see about 10 Martian robots standing, or rather, floating behind me.
"Oh. That army."
"Annihilate that bunny!" Melvin ordered. The robots immediately reacted to his command and charged me.
And I was looking forward to a few days without fighting, I thought as I jumped into the air, and then landed on the shoulders of one robot. It reached up to grab me, so I jumped again onto another robot's head. I jumped off of that one, and landed a few feet behind them.
I felt the familiar feeling of energy in my head, aimed, and fired a brain blast at the robots. It hit three of them; one of them dead-on, and the others were hit hard enough for there to be some serious damage.
There should have been serious damage, anyway. The other two weren't even scratched, and the one I hit dead-on had barely any damage done to it. It was still floating above the ground and ready for a fight, along with the rest of it's friends, who had by that time turned back to face me and were pointing their fingers at me. I knew enough about Martian technology to know that they put their robot's lasers in their fingers, taking the term 'point and shoot' to a new level.
Lousy Martian technology… I thought, diving behind some trash cans to avoid being incinerated.
I stood up, sent out a powerful brain-blast at the nearest robot, and held it for as long as possible, which was increasingly difficult due to the fact that the other robots were starting to surround me. Finally, just before I was about to give out, the robot exploded, damaging the ones next to it even more than my brain-blasts did.
So they do more damage to each other than I do… Then that means all I have to do is make one blow up when it's near other ones!
The only problem with this plan was the fact that I didn't have enough energy left in me for another long, powerful blast. The robots started firing at me again, so I just started jumping and swerving, trying to avoid getting hit, but as I got more and more tired, I started moving slower. It didn't take too long for me to move slow enough past one of the robots for it to grab me by the leg and throw me against a wall. It threw me hard enough to make me see stars, and by the time my vision cleared again, the robots had me surrounded.
I heard Melvin laugh somewhere behind the wall of robots. "You're no match for Martian technology! But really, nice job. I wasn't expecting you to break any of them, and yet you took one down, almost two! But now, your time is up. Robots! Ready!"
All of the remaining robots simultaneously pointed at me, and I knew that it would not end well.
"Aim!" They all started charging a laser blast at the end of their fingers.
I just shut my eyes and waited for the end. There was no way out, and I was too exhausted to go down fighting.
A/N: CLIFFHANGER! Yes, I did it. I left you all hanging. So, there! This is why I'll try to get my next chapter up ASAP. Unfortunately, I haven't even started it yet… Which I usually do before posting anther chapter… Hmm… Oh, well, whatever. I'll get it up. And if not, I'll eat my socks.
R&R!
