Justin
Ah, the joy of stitches. Having a needle jammed into my skin multiple times while the doctor sewed the gash in my arm shut sucked, but the painkillers were great, so it was a fair enough trade. It was almost a relief to be at a hospital. The relief was that I wasn't trying to explain things to cops and listen in on Steiner and make sure we were still telling the same story. The almost part showed up just as the doctor came in to start sewing me up. Unfortunately they had already determined I was going to live, so I didn't have much hope for mercy when my father walked into the exam room.
At least the clean up had been done. Before the cops got to MedGen, I had wiped off the gun, the story already forming in my mind. I put it in Wendy's hand for a moment, and then held it in mine like I had fired it. I wasn't sure if they would be able to tell which prints were put on first, but that eliminated that problem. Wendy had eliminated the second one herself when she had taken out the guard at the front desk. She had yanked out and destroyed the tape of the cameras so there was nothing recorded from that night. More important, there was no evidence of Jhondie being there. Steiner believed my story of Jhondie having a parole officer that would throw her in jail if he knew she had left LA. Since she did save his life, he agreed to edit out that little nonessential fact.
It was easy enough to explain things to the cops. I was bleeding. Dead guy upstairs. Dead shooter outside. Lots of money involved in corporate takeovers. Wendy had taken two more shots at me in the lobby and dropped the gun. I didn't know why. She just did. But she had another one so it didn't matter. I grabbed it and when she tried on the sidewalk, I got in one good one. End of story. They took notes and statements and then shipped my bleeding self over to a hospital to get stitched up. They were easy. Dad was not going to be so easy.
He didn't say much as the doctor stitched my arm up and bandaged it. He told me he would give me a prescription for some oral painkillers and I could be on my way. I would rather have whatever they injected me with earlier, but you can't have everything. The doctor left and Dad gave me a cold, hard stare for a long moment. I might have just started babbling and confessed everything, but I was feeling a little more mellow than normal at the moment.
"Your hotel called me very early this morning," he said evenly. "Place had been shot up and you disappeared. Luckily I was still on the contact list."
"Dad." I tried to explain, but he cut me off.
"So I called Steiner since I know that if something happened to you, I would be the first person you called," he continued. His tone was perfectly calm. I had never seen him this pissed before, and that included the time he found out that I had a fake ID when I was fifteen. "And wouldn't you know it, but Steiner said you were just fine, but he couldn't tell me more because of lawyer/client confidentiality. So I decide to come up here, and ask Ashley if she would watch the twins, and you want to guess what she tells me?"
I leaned back in the suturing chair and closed my eyes, blowing out a breath. "She's fine," I said in a low voice. "I didn't want her to have to get dragged into the official mess. And I was too busy trying to find out who was trying to kill me to tell everyone where I was. Besides, the phones might have been tapped and then they would have known exactly where I was. Not the best thing when you are trying to avoid death. Steiner had to be contacted so that he would stop negotiations with MedGen since I thought at first they were responsible."
This was not helping my case any. I guess the last thing a parent wants to hear is that he is a liability rather than a help. "Dad, I didn't think about the hotel calling you. I got chased all over the city last night with some guys trying to kill me, and they almost did. I had to focus on what was immediate, and the rest was just going to have to wait. I had to find out what was going on." I hoped that would help. He knew it was my nature to find out the truth first.
"Ever consider a little thing called calling the police?" he snapped.
I grimaced. "Cops are for sale to the highest bidder," I replied sharply. "Especially in this city. All it would have taken was BioTech to own one or two and I would have been history. This had to be a solo act."
"Not exactly solo," he commented. God, this was not something I wanted to explain. Not something I would explain. I didn't care what I had to say to protect her but I had promised her once that I would never tell anyone, and to me, that included my father.
"We were on the phone when I was at the hotel. She heard the gunshots and I wouldn't answer and she panicked. I sent her an e-mail later to not worry, but she was already on her way. I tried to send her back but telling her to do something is like trying to tell that wall to move three feet to the left." I was hoping he would laugh. He had said before how stubborn Jhondie was when someone she cared about was involved. He had no idea.
"And you just got all of this information about BioTech anonymously at the hotel?" That's what I had told the cops. There was a letter slid under my door when I got in the day before with a magazine article attached that had the formula on it and what it did, and that it dissolved instantly in water. The letter said that BioTech had the chemical and was trying to do a hostile take over. I put it together when someone tried to kill me too. The letter wasn't at the hotel? Not a shock since the bad guys must have known about it, which is why they tried to kill me loudly instead of quietly like my uncle, and taken it before they left.
I still wished Dad hadn't asked me that question. I suck at lying to him. "Dad.I found out what I needed to know and went from there, okay?"
He held up a CD and I knew I was screwed. My laptop. The CD the informant had given to me had been in my laptop. Dad's eyes were cold. "You didn't mention this to the police."
"No I did not," I replied evenly. Thank God for drugs. They were the only things keeping me from trying to run like hell about then. "They didn't need to know about it."
"You lied to them about how you got all of that information," he accused, bitterness finally starting to creep into his voice.
"They were happy with the story they got," I replied sharply. "Good journalists protect their sources, remember? I got critical information and used it. That's what counted and that's what anyone needs to know."
Dad shook his head. "None of this is adding up, son. Ashley said that you arranged the ticket and paperwork. You managed to do that, but now you're claiming you were running for your life at the same time. You got information that you should have and I looked at what was on this CD. You want to hear what a search on that drug came up with?"
I looked away. I already knew there wasn't a thing on it. The files were all with Jhondie back at the motel where we had stayed. Where I should have left my damn laptop, but I had brought it in case we needed it to jack into a security system. Jhondie had done some set up earlier in case she was going to have to do that and everything was set. At least my e-mail program was encrypted so Dad didn't read more than he should have. How was I supposed to explain all of this now without mentioning Jhondie and why she was capable of getting to Seattle?
"It doesn't matter," I insisted. "You can believe what you want to. I had to do what I did, and I am not going to feel bad for it. It's all taken care of now. Why worry about how I got to where I did?"
Dad gave me a curt nod. "Fine. Where's Jhondie? I really want to know how she managed to get here."
Son of a bitch. That was pure blackmail and we both knew it. He didn't know how much it was though. Worst case, and she would have to let Dad know about herself. That's what she had said. As Dad went to walk out of the room, I knew that she would tell him and take all of the blame on herself. That was not going to happen.
"I didn't have to arrange anything for Jhondie." Dad stopped and turned around. Our eyes met evenly. "She contacted someone here and he arranged for everything. Same person that I got that CD from."
Dad looked at me disbelievingly. "You just happened to know someone here that could do all of that and would do it?"
"I've been working for him the last couple of years. He's more than capable, and after all we've done for him, doing what he did was a nice way to say thanks."
Dad blinked. "Who the hell are you talking about?" I don't think I needed to really say the words right then. Dad was a very intelligent man, and he was already putting the pieces together. I was planning on being an investigative journalist. We were in Seattle. There was someone in Seattle that I had professed admiration for that was in my field.
"You already know who I'm talking about," I replied, confirming the suspicions. I didn't want to say the words out loud, at least not in a public place like this. Anyone could walk in, and I didn't want them to hear the words "Informant Net" or "Eyes Only" being tossed around. "We're playing on his home turf and he's capable of some pretty incredible things up here."
Dad sat down heavily, stunned at what I had just said. "Incredible?" he fired back. "More like criminal."
"He is not a criminal," I defended immediately.
"Really?" Dad said sarcastically. "I'm so glad to hear that he's a fine upstanding citizen. After all, lots of people with nothing to hide use illegal means to spread rumor and innuendo. Son, you want to be a real journalist, you know I've supported you for years on that, but this man, he.he makes people panic and then believe what he tells them to since they are scared. A lot of these people remember the Pulse Riots and how some heavy means were used to restore order. It wasn't pretty so now there's going to be a natural distrust of the government. He banks on that to feed his own need for power. And now he's got you believing in those lies as well."
"He tells the truth," I snapped. "I'd rather hide and tell the truth than be in the open and spouting one lie after another. I just spent three weeks at a workshop where we were being taught to do just that. It made me ill to hear all of that crap. I will not be part of the problem when I can be part of the solution."
"And you're just going to blindly believe that what he's saying is the truth?" Dad questioned me, trying to be reasonable and get me to see what he believed was the light. "The headlines of trash tabloids sound plausible too, you know."
"I know what I've done is the truth. I'd say at least 80% of the information in the hacks we've seen in LA in the past year is things that I've gotten for him. Stories that I've done the research on and found the evidence and gave to him to expose." I looked away, trying to explain something that was hard to define in my own head.
"The last two hacks that were done were things that he never asked me to start researching. I did it all myself. The only thing I couldn't do was getting the word out myself because of all of the censorship. So I used the only means available. And things did change. Remember that kiddy porn ring that was exposed two months ago? That hack forced the cops to get involved. They couldn't get paid enough to ignore it then since people were watching. If people who do evil in this world aren't afraid of being caught and punished, then they are going to continue to do it. I can let it happen. Or I can decide that the world will not be like this while I can make a change."
Dad didn't say anything, and then my doctor came back in. His eyes flicked from me to my father and then back again, the tension in the air concerning him. He correctly decided that none of it mattered to him and gave me a prescription and some instructions before letting me go. Dad didn't really say anything as he drove us back to the hotel that Steiner had booked us into. It wasn't the one we had stayed at before. For some reason, they weren't thrilled at the idea of having me back. Couldn't blame them.
We went inside the room, and Dad waited in silence while I went to the bathroom and cleaned up. It was nice to get all of the blood off of me. I was getting groggy from the painkillers and wanted to talk to Jhondie and get a little sleep. When I came out, Dad was still there, but this time he was looking more thoughtful than angry.
"That porn ring," he said hesitantly. "I saw the broadcast about that. It showed a picture of a little girl and I did a massive double take. She looked so much like Brittany. They could have been sisters, it was that close. I couldn't imagine something like that happening to my daughter. I remember watching it and wondering if it was true, what was happening to these girls and where their parents were."
"Melanie Ann King," I said, sitting down on the bed. "I'm still not too positive about what happened to some of the girls, including her. I think once they get to a certain age, they stopped taking pictures of them and shipped them overseas and sold them into slavery. That wasn't broadcasted since I don't have any proof. That's still a suspicion, so it's not a hack." The last sentence was stated for effect. It didn't seem to faze Dad though. He was still deep in thought about the situation.
"And Jhondie is." he questioned.
"My partner," I replied. "It's a long story and I don't want to get into it, but at first when we were just friends, we were also partners, helping to get this information to Eyes Only. I don't know if she's going to be able to keep helping me for much longer since she does have to concentrate on her own future career. But yeah, she knows everything."
Dad got up and went to the window, staring out onto the street and into the broken city of Seattle. A long moment passed as he processed everything. "I'm proud of you, son," he finally said quietly, shocking the hell out of me. "I know I shouldn't be since I can't say I approve of what you've been doing, but I am anyways." He turned around and met my eyes. "When I was your age, my main goals were getting through college and getting in as much partying as possible before graduating. And here you are running around trying to save the world and still keeping your GPA up. That takes a hell of a lot of strength of conviction and for that, I'm proud of you."
It's kind of funny. I thought that I was a man and didn't need my parent's approval to do what I wanted in my life. That was being an adult. You got to make your own choices and take your own consequences for them. But I was glad to hear that from my father. Kids do want to make their parents proud of them no matter what age they are. I wasn't exactly taking the route he had thought I would, but he was the one that taught me to set the highest goals for myself. This was the way to accomplish my goal and I was doing it. He understood that and was proud of me for what I had done. I was glad he knew. It meant no more sneaking around and hiding things, yes, but most importantly, it meant he knew that what he had taught, the values he had tried to instill were there and that I was going to live up to them. And that was the one thing that every parent wanted. To know that their child had taken what they had been taught and used it to seek for the highest that was possible.
Ah, the joy of stitches. Having a needle jammed into my skin multiple times while the doctor sewed the gash in my arm shut sucked, but the painkillers were great, so it was a fair enough trade. It was almost a relief to be at a hospital. The relief was that I wasn't trying to explain things to cops and listen in on Steiner and make sure we were still telling the same story. The almost part showed up just as the doctor came in to start sewing me up. Unfortunately they had already determined I was going to live, so I didn't have much hope for mercy when my father walked into the exam room.
At least the clean up had been done. Before the cops got to MedGen, I had wiped off the gun, the story already forming in my mind. I put it in Wendy's hand for a moment, and then held it in mine like I had fired it. I wasn't sure if they would be able to tell which prints were put on first, but that eliminated that problem. Wendy had eliminated the second one herself when she had taken out the guard at the front desk. She had yanked out and destroyed the tape of the cameras so there was nothing recorded from that night. More important, there was no evidence of Jhondie being there. Steiner believed my story of Jhondie having a parole officer that would throw her in jail if he knew she had left LA. Since she did save his life, he agreed to edit out that little nonessential fact.
It was easy enough to explain things to the cops. I was bleeding. Dead guy upstairs. Dead shooter outside. Lots of money involved in corporate takeovers. Wendy had taken two more shots at me in the lobby and dropped the gun. I didn't know why. She just did. But she had another one so it didn't matter. I grabbed it and when she tried on the sidewalk, I got in one good one. End of story. They took notes and statements and then shipped my bleeding self over to a hospital to get stitched up. They were easy. Dad was not going to be so easy.
He didn't say much as the doctor stitched my arm up and bandaged it. He told me he would give me a prescription for some oral painkillers and I could be on my way. I would rather have whatever they injected me with earlier, but you can't have everything. The doctor left and Dad gave me a cold, hard stare for a long moment. I might have just started babbling and confessed everything, but I was feeling a little more mellow than normal at the moment.
"Your hotel called me very early this morning," he said evenly. "Place had been shot up and you disappeared. Luckily I was still on the contact list."
"Dad." I tried to explain, but he cut me off.
"So I called Steiner since I know that if something happened to you, I would be the first person you called," he continued. His tone was perfectly calm. I had never seen him this pissed before, and that included the time he found out that I had a fake ID when I was fifteen. "And wouldn't you know it, but Steiner said you were just fine, but he couldn't tell me more because of lawyer/client confidentiality. So I decide to come up here, and ask Ashley if she would watch the twins, and you want to guess what she tells me?"
I leaned back in the suturing chair and closed my eyes, blowing out a breath. "She's fine," I said in a low voice. "I didn't want her to have to get dragged into the official mess. And I was too busy trying to find out who was trying to kill me to tell everyone where I was. Besides, the phones might have been tapped and then they would have known exactly where I was. Not the best thing when you are trying to avoid death. Steiner had to be contacted so that he would stop negotiations with MedGen since I thought at first they were responsible."
This was not helping my case any. I guess the last thing a parent wants to hear is that he is a liability rather than a help. "Dad, I didn't think about the hotel calling you. I got chased all over the city last night with some guys trying to kill me, and they almost did. I had to focus on what was immediate, and the rest was just going to have to wait. I had to find out what was going on." I hoped that would help. He knew it was my nature to find out the truth first.
"Ever consider a little thing called calling the police?" he snapped.
I grimaced. "Cops are for sale to the highest bidder," I replied sharply. "Especially in this city. All it would have taken was BioTech to own one or two and I would have been history. This had to be a solo act."
"Not exactly solo," he commented. God, this was not something I wanted to explain. Not something I would explain. I didn't care what I had to say to protect her but I had promised her once that I would never tell anyone, and to me, that included my father.
"We were on the phone when I was at the hotel. She heard the gunshots and I wouldn't answer and she panicked. I sent her an e-mail later to not worry, but she was already on her way. I tried to send her back but telling her to do something is like trying to tell that wall to move three feet to the left." I was hoping he would laugh. He had said before how stubborn Jhondie was when someone she cared about was involved. He had no idea.
"And you just got all of this information about BioTech anonymously at the hotel?" That's what I had told the cops. There was a letter slid under my door when I got in the day before with a magazine article attached that had the formula on it and what it did, and that it dissolved instantly in water. The letter said that BioTech had the chemical and was trying to do a hostile take over. I put it together when someone tried to kill me too. The letter wasn't at the hotel? Not a shock since the bad guys must have known about it, which is why they tried to kill me loudly instead of quietly like my uncle, and taken it before they left.
I still wished Dad hadn't asked me that question. I suck at lying to him. "Dad.I found out what I needed to know and went from there, okay?"
He held up a CD and I knew I was screwed. My laptop. The CD the informant had given to me had been in my laptop. Dad's eyes were cold. "You didn't mention this to the police."
"No I did not," I replied evenly. Thank God for drugs. They were the only things keeping me from trying to run like hell about then. "They didn't need to know about it."
"You lied to them about how you got all of that information," he accused, bitterness finally starting to creep into his voice.
"They were happy with the story they got," I replied sharply. "Good journalists protect their sources, remember? I got critical information and used it. That's what counted and that's what anyone needs to know."
Dad shook his head. "None of this is adding up, son. Ashley said that you arranged the ticket and paperwork. You managed to do that, but now you're claiming you were running for your life at the same time. You got information that you should have and I looked at what was on this CD. You want to hear what a search on that drug came up with?"
I looked away. I already knew there wasn't a thing on it. The files were all with Jhondie back at the motel where we had stayed. Where I should have left my damn laptop, but I had brought it in case we needed it to jack into a security system. Jhondie had done some set up earlier in case she was going to have to do that and everything was set. At least my e-mail program was encrypted so Dad didn't read more than he should have. How was I supposed to explain all of this now without mentioning Jhondie and why she was capable of getting to Seattle?
"It doesn't matter," I insisted. "You can believe what you want to. I had to do what I did, and I am not going to feel bad for it. It's all taken care of now. Why worry about how I got to where I did?"
Dad gave me a curt nod. "Fine. Where's Jhondie? I really want to know how she managed to get here."
Son of a bitch. That was pure blackmail and we both knew it. He didn't know how much it was though. Worst case, and she would have to let Dad know about herself. That's what she had said. As Dad went to walk out of the room, I knew that she would tell him and take all of the blame on herself. That was not going to happen.
"I didn't have to arrange anything for Jhondie." Dad stopped and turned around. Our eyes met evenly. "She contacted someone here and he arranged for everything. Same person that I got that CD from."
Dad looked at me disbelievingly. "You just happened to know someone here that could do all of that and would do it?"
"I've been working for him the last couple of years. He's more than capable, and after all we've done for him, doing what he did was a nice way to say thanks."
Dad blinked. "Who the hell are you talking about?" I don't think I needed to really say the words right then. Dad was a very intelligent man, and he was already putting the pieces together. I was planning on being an investigative journalist. We were in Seattle. There was someone in Seattle that I had professed admiration for that was in my field.
"You already know who I'm talking about," I replied, confirming the suspicions. I didn't want to say the words out loud, at least not in a public place like this. Anyone could walk in, and I didn't want them to hear the words "Informant Net" or "Eyes Only" being tossed around. "We're playing on his home turf and he's capable of some pretty incredible things up here."
Dad sat down heavily, stunned at what I had just said. "Incredible?" he fired back. "More like criminal."
"He is not a criminal," I defended immediately.
"Really?" Dad said sarcastically. "I'm so glad to hear that he's a fine upstanding citizen. After all, lots of people with nothing to hide use illegal means to spread rumor and innuendo. Son, you want to be a real journalist, you know I've supported you for years on that, but this man, he.he makes people panic and then believe what he tells them to since they are scared. A lot of these people remember the Pulse Riots and how some heavy means were used to restore order. It wasn't pretty so now there's going to be a natural distrust of the government. He banks on that to feed his own need for power. And now he's got you believing in those lies as well."
"He tells the truth," I snapped. "I'd rather hide and tell the truth than be in the open and spouting one lie after another. I just spent three weeks at a workshop where we were being taught to do just that. It made me ill to hear all of that crap. I will not be part of the problem when I can be part of the solution."
"And you're just going to blindly believe that what he's saying is the truth?" Dad questioned me, trying to be reasonable and get me to see what he believed was the light. "The headlines of trash tabloids sound plausible too, you know."
"I know what I've done is the truth. I'd say at least 80% of the information in the hacks we've seen in LA in the past year is things that I've gotten for him. Stories that I've done the research on and found the evidence and gave to him to expose." I looked away, trying to explain something that was hard to define in my own head.
"The last two hacks that were done were things that he never asked me to start researching. I did it all myself. The only thing I couldn't do was getting the word out myself because of all of the censorship. So I used the only means available. And things did change. Remember that kiddy porn ring that was exposed two months ago? That hack forced the cops to get involved. They couldn't get paid enough to ignore it then since people were watching. If people who do evil in this world aren't afraid of being caught and punished, then they are going to continue to do it. I can let it happen. Or I can decide that the world will not be like this while I can make a change."
Dad didn't say anything, and then my doctor came back in. His eyes flicked from me to my father and then back again, the tension in the air concerning him. He correctly decided that none of it mattered to him and gave me a prescription and some instructions before letting me go. Dad didn't really say anything as he drove us back to the hotel that Steiner had booked us into. It wasn't the one we had stayed at before. For some reason, they weren't thrilled at the idea of having me back. Couldn't blame them.
We went inside the room, and Dad waited in silence while I went to the bathroom and cleaned up. It was nice to get all of the blood off of me. I was getting groggy from the painkillers and wanted to talk to Jhondie and get a little sleep. When I came out, Dad was still there, but this time he was looking more thoughtful than angry.
"That porn ring," he said hesitantly. "I saw the broadcast about that. It showed a picture of a little girl and I did a massive double take. She looked so much like Brittany. They could have been sisters, it was that close. I couldn't imagine something like that happening to my daughter. I remember watching it and wondering if it was true, what was happening to these girls and where their parents were."
"Melanie Ann King," I said, sitting down on the bed. "I'm still not too positive about what happened to some of the girls, including her. I think once they get to a certain age, they stopped taking pictures of them and shipped them overseas and sold them into slavery. That wasn't broadcasted since I don't have any proof. That's still a suspicion, so it's not a hack." The last sentence was stated for effect. It didn't seem to faze Dad though. He was still deep in thought about the situation.
"And Jhondie is." he questioned.
"My partner," I replied. "It's a long story and I don't want to get into it, but at first when we were just friends, we were also partners, helping to get this information to Eyes Only. I don't know if she's going to be able to keep helping me for much longer since she does have to concentrate on her own future career. But yeah, she knows everything."
Dad got up and went to the window, staring out onto the street and into the broken city of Seattle. A long moment passed as he processed everything. "I'm proud of you, son," he finally said quietly, shocking the hell out of me. "I know I shouldn't be since I can't say I approve of what you've been doing, but I am anyways." He turned around and met my eyes. "When I was your age, my main goals were getting through college and getting in as much partying as possible before graduating. And here you are running around trying to save the world and still keeping your GPA up. That takes a hell of a lot of strength of conviction and for that, I'm proud of you."
It's kind of funny. I thought that I was a man and didn't need my parent's approval to do what I wanted in my life. That was being an adult. You got to make your own choices and take your own consequences for them. But I was glad to hear that from my father. Kids do want to make their parents proud of them no matter what age they are. I wasn't exactly taking the route he had thought I would, but he was the one that taught me to set the highest goals for myself. This was the way to accomplish my goal and I was doing it. He understood that and was proud of me for what I had done. I was glad he knew. It meant no more sneaking around and hiding things, yes, but most importantly, it meant he knew that what he had taught, the values he had tried to instill were there and that I was going to live up to them. And that was the one thing that every parent wanted. To know that their child had taken what they had been taught and used it to seek for the highest that was possible.
