Chapter 6: Disaster Around Every Corner
Jeremiah ran as fast as he could towards the exit door that led out to Gotham Harbor. He knew that the only way he could survive the blast was to make it to the water. But, just as he opened the exit door-
KABOOOOOOM! GothCorp blew sky high.
The force of the blast sent Jeremiah's body hurling 200 feet into the harbor. It felt like a brick wall when he smacked the surface of the cold water- nearly knocking Jeremiah out. He knew he would have to remain conscious, because if not, he would surely drown. First he removed his coat because it was weighing him down. Then, he tried swimming as fast as he could for a dry piece of land. He was beginning to fade in and out. The blast of the bomb gave him a concussion and he wasn't sure if he was going to make it.
All….
Most….
THERE!
Suddenly, everything faded to black.
An hour later, Jeremiah could barely open his eyes. His vision was very blurred. He could see the flames of the burning building off in the distance. Then he looked around at his surroundings. He realized he was on a boat drifting in the harbor.
"Where am I?" He rose up wanting to know.
A strong firm hand grabbed Jeremiah's shoulder. "It's okay son! You're okay!" A man's voice declared while trying to calm him.
"My father was in that building! Those Bastards blew him up!"
"I don't think anyone was in that building. It hasn't had any employees for over a year. I think it's mostly used for storage now." The man assured him.
Jeremiah thought he recognized the man's voice. Then, he turned to look for confirmation. "I've seen you before…. At the dojo…. I've seen you having conversations with Sensei Wayne after class was getting over with."
"Yes. Mr. Wayne and I go way back. You are actually on one of his boats right now."
"Who are you?" Jeremiah asked.
"The name is Drake, Tim Drake."
There was a loud knock on the door of a large mansion home which once belonged to Rupert Thorne, and was now owned by Roman Sionis. Roman's son, Tommy, went to open the door because he was the only one there at the time. His eyes widened with fear when he saw who it was.
"What are you guys doing here? He asked of the Serpent leader, Officer Smits, and Officer Rochman. "I swear, I never said anything to my father about what happened at school today."
"Relax! We ain't here for that reason!" The Serpent leader exclaimed. "We need to talk to your daddy! It's about business!"
"My father isn't home. I don't know when he'll be back."
"That's alright. Do you guys have a computer we could use. We need to check out this security footage." The Serpent leader insisted as he abruptly walked into the home.
"Yeah… Yeah…. Right this way." Tommy replied, though he was surprised by the request. "What are you guys looking for?"
"None of your business!" Officer Smits blurted out.
"Yeah! If you ever want that lip to heal up, you'll stop asking so many questions." Officer Rochman added.
Tommy kept his mouth shut while logging onto the computer in his father's den.
Then, The Serpent leader plugged in the memory drive from the surveillance video at GothCorp. He was trying to see if he could figure out who their mystery guest was that surprised them before they blew up the building. He forwarded through the video, trying to get to the point when the mystery guest entered.
"There he is boss!" Smits declared. "It's hard to make out who it is because he keeps blocking the camera with his hand as he walks by."
"Wait! Rewind that frame and pause it when he puts his hand up to block the camera." The Serpent leader instructed.
After rewinding it and pausing it at that exact moment- "What is that written on his hand?" The Serpent leader asked.
"It looks like a phone number, boss."
"Can you make it out?"
"Just barely."
Tommy was hanging out in the background acting as if he wasn't paying attention. But he was. When Officer Smits read off the phone number on the mystery man's hand, he knew exactly whose number it was.
The Serpent leader turned to Tommy. "Let me see your cell phone. I need to call this number."
Tommy didn't want to give him his phone. Instead he lied and said he didn't have one.
"What teenager doesn't have a cell phone?" The Serpent leader inquired.
"My father is too cheap to buy me one." Tommy replied.
"Ha ha ha! I can believe that!" The Serpent leader laughed. "Sounds just like your father!"
"It's okay, boss. I got mine with me." Officer Rochman said while dialing the number.
The phone rang a couple times, but Valerie didn't answer because she was watching the GothCorp explosion on the news. Instead, the call went to her voicemail. Rochman put it on speaker.
"Hi. This is Valerie. Sorry I wasn't able to answer your call. You know what to do after the beep. Bye." BEEEEP!
"Can you get any information about that phone number? We need to find out who this Valerie girl is and where she lives." The Serpent leader declared.
"Let me do a reverse phone number lookup on Google." Smits said while typing it in. "Nothing is coming up." He added.
"Come on. Let's go." The Serpent leader ordered. "We'll keep calling it until she answers."
After the men left, Tommy quickly tried to call Valerie because he wanted to warn her about the men who were looking for her, but again, she didn't answer. He was about to leave a voicemail, but he thought twice about it. He then hung up the phone. He didn't want to get caught up in the whole mess, especially if they found her phone and noticed that he tried to warn her.
Moments later, while driving in the police car, the three men got word from the dispatcher that they had discovered who the phone number belonged to. They were also given Valerie's home address.
"That address is about 20 minutes from here." The three men immediately started heading that direction.
15 minutes later, Tommy received a call from Valerie. He almost didn't want to answer it, but he was kind of jealous that she gave someone her phone number and wanted answers.
"Hello!"
"Hey, Tommy. I noticed you tried calling a little bit ago, but you didn't leave a voicemail. Sorry I didn't answer the phone. Did you see what happened at the GothCorp building? I felt the explosion from my place."
"Yeah, I heard. That's not why I called earlier."
"Oh. What's up?"
"Who did you give your phone number to today?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about! Whose hand did you write your phone number on today?"
"Tommy. It's not what you think. It's a friend. That's all. He's been going through a lot lately and needed someone to talk to."
"Oh yeah! Sure! That is laughable! Do you always write your phone number in everyone's hand?"
"How did you find out about it?" She asked.
"Nevermind that! Who was it?" Tommy demanded to know.
"Fine! If you really need to know that bad! I'll tell you!" She replied, but just as she was about to tell him, she heard a knock on the front door. "I'll call you right back! Someone is at my door! Bye!"
"Wait! Don't answer that!" But it was too late. She had already hung up.
When Valerie opened the door, Officer's Smits and Rochman were standing out front.
"Hi. Is there something I can help you officers with? Did something bad happen?"
"No. Nothing bad has happened…. yet. We just have a couple questions for you."
"Everyone has questions for me tonight. What do you want to know?"
"We want to know who you gave your phone number to today."
"What?" She was surprised because Tommy had just asked her that same question. "What is all this about? Why does everyone want to know about who I give my number to all of a sudden?"
"Can we see your cell phone?" Smits asked.
"No! You need to tell me what's going on here!" She demanded.
Suddenly, Valerie was startled with fear, when the Serpent leader came out from around the corner. She tried to scream, but he quickly grabbed her by the mouth and muffled her.
"We could have done this the easy way! Now we have to do this my way! The hard way!" The Serpent leader declared as he threw her down on the couch and kept her from screaming. "Get her cell phone!" He demanded.
The other two men searched her pockets until one of them found her phone. Then, they tried getting onto it, but it had a password code.
"It's locked, boss."
The Serpent leader stared down at Valerie with his snake-eyes. "What is the password to unlock your phone?" He asked while slightly uncovering her mouth.
"GO TO HELL, FREAK!" She exclaimed.
"Freak? You want to see a freak?" He asked, and then stuck out his forked-tongue and licked the side of her face, causing her to turn away in disgust.
Smits began trying to put several different passwords into the cell phone. Suddenly, her phone started flickering on and off as if it was short circuiting. Another trick her mother taught her.
"We are going to find out who you gave that phone number to whether you like it or not. Why are you protecting them? Is it your boyfriend's number? Well, I've got some bad news for ya. Your boyfriend was in that building when it exploded. There is no way he survived. Now, I'm looking for something that he took from me. It's very important. If you aren't going to help us figure out who he is, then we are going to have to do some terrible things to you. Have you ever had your fingernails peeled back one by one and then had someone squeeze down on your fingertips? Because, if you don't tell us what we want to know, that is only the beginning of how we are going to torture you."
Valerie was very frightened. She knew exactly what the men were looking for. But she stayed strong and didn't answer any of their questions.
"Go check out her bedroom. Look for anything that might be on her computer." The Serpent leader instructed.
The two officers went into Valerie's room and started tearing everything apart. They opened up her computer to check the motherboard, but the microchip wasn't there. She was smart and did what Jeremiah asked her to do.
The next morning had come around. Jeremiah woke up. He could barely move because his body was still incredibly sore after the explosion knocked him into the cold Gotham Harbor.
"Ugh!" He grunted as he reached over for the remote control to the television. He wanted to see if the news had any reports as to whether or not the police had found any survivors. He was worried about his father and praying he wasn't inside when the building went up in flames. The local news channel was mostly showing firetrucks trying to put out the rest of the flames. It also appeared as if several buildings on that block had also suffered damages.
Suddenly, a special bulletin flashed across the screen.
"The police are now looking for a missing person. Valerie Stephens, a 17 year old female from Gotham City, has been reported missing from her home. Her adopted parents said they came home after working and found her room torn up and she was nowhere to be found. Police officials are saying they believe that she could have been kidnapped. They also haven't ruled her out as a runaway. Although her parents said it wasn't like her to do something like this. If you have any information as to the whereabouts of Valerie Stephens, please call your local police station…. Meanwhile, Gotham City Fire officials continue trying to put out the flames of-"
CLICK! Jeremiah turned off the television.
"This is impossible! How could they have possibly known she was somehow involved with me? I just don't understand why so much bad stuff has to happen in my life! First my dad- now Valerie. This shit has to stop!" He declared while throwing his remote across the room, causing it to shatter into pieces against the wall.
Despite the pain he felt in his body, he got out of his bed and grabbed hold of his football gear. "It's time for me to make some upgrades to my uniform."
He traveled to his father's house because his father was an avid collector of knights armor and chainmail. He was a big fan of playing Dungeons and Dragons back in the day. Jeremiah also found some crimson red metallic spray paint and painted his entire helmet the same color. However, you could still slightly see the initials "CR" engraved on it, which stood for Central Raiders.
He then took the protective steel pieces of the knight's helmet and placed them on the front of the football helmet's face-mask. After that, he reinforced his shoulder-pads, chest plate, and thigh-pads with the steel armor. He wanted the outfit to be as bulletproof as possible. He added an extra metal bump on both of his shoulder-pads because he wanted to make sure his enemies felt every bit of his force when he tackled them.
He then went to his father's closet and found one of his black and red Gotham Knights football uniforms. Because of its bulkiness, it seemed to fit perfectly over the bulkiness of his newly protective gear and the color matched perfectly with the new dark metallic red of his helmet. He covered his father's name and jersey number to prevent anyone from knowing where it came from.
He was now ready to go kick some Satan's Serpents asses. And he wasn't going to stop until he found out what happened to Valerie and his father.
