PFC Chapter 4367 The Justice League Assembles (5)
Chapter 4367 The Justice League Assembles (5)
Chapter 4367 Justice League: Assemble (XV)
Victor sat on the sofa, fiddling with his mother's cell phone. After a while, he leaned his head back on the sofa, then looked up at the ceiling, recalling the day of the car accident.
“I’m so sorry, Vic. Your dad can’t come to your game. He really has something very important to do…”
“This is my first championship ever.” The young Black man in the passenger seat showed no appreciation whatsoever. “He hasn’t been home for six months. He doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care about my feelings. He’s not a good father, he’s not a good husband…”
“He has his reasons,” the Black woman in the driver’s seat sighed. “It’s his hard work that has given us the comfortable life we have today. You should know that sports are expensive. We live in a good neighborhood, and thousands of dollars just disappear like water every month, yet I still have savings. It’s all thanks to your father’s hard work.”
"Work hard to research alien freaks? Please, do you think I'm a three-year-old? There are no aliens!" The young man shook his head and turned away from his mother.
His mother, somewhat helpless, turned to look at him, as if to say something. But the next second, a truck crashed into them from the side. Victor didn't remember much of what happened after that.
When he woke up again, he wasn't in a hospital or at home, but in a laboratory. He saw his long-lost father, and he also saw himself transformed into a monster.
He could no longer play ball, and he couldn't even go to school anymore. His life was completely over. At least, that's what he thought before he discovered his superpowers.
However, the immense power granted by his mechanical body quickly helped him regain his sense of self. The first time he mustered the courage to go out after the accident, he saw a mother and son lingering in front of an ATM in the snowy night, unable to withdraw even $11.
He gave them some money, not his own, but money he hacked into the ATM. The way they looked at him with such admiration made Victor feel alive again. Later, he contacted his old classmate Derry, intending to donate to several welfare institutions, but Derry suggested donating to impoverished Black communities instead, so that if he encountered any trouble later, Derry could lend him a hand.
Victor, simply enjoying the adoration, readily agreed. He would regularly procure money and give it to Derry to distribute in the community, and he also met with the local gang leader a few times.
This is the only job Victor has done since the accident: using his hacking skills to make money and send it to the poor. He's been busy with this, which helps him forget the terrible accident.
Over time, he helped almost every community around him. Every community knew of a strange man with a steel mask who would give them money when they needed it most. Victor enjoyed their respect and felt he could live like this forever.
But now, seeing his mother's belongings again, Victor was overwhelmed with emotion. He was forced to recall the tragic accident that had cost him his mother, an accident that had occurred because of an argument he had with her. Victor was filled with guilt, almost suffocating him.
From his childhood, his father was always busy with work and had no time to spend with him. If it weren't for the money he would send and the occasional visit home, he would have thought he didn't have a father at all.
His mother had always been good to him, caring about him in every way. She even went to the school to apologize and help him resolve a huge problem when he misbehaved and used hacking techniques to change his exam scores. Now, he has nothing left.
Thinking of this, Victor felt a pang of sorrow and gripped his phone tightly. His mother's face was already clear enough in his memory, but he still wanted to see her, still wanted to wait for her to come home from grocery shopping, open the door, and ask her if she was hungry.
Tears streamed down Victor's face as he wiped them away and turned his phone back on. He remembered his mother's fondness for taking pictures with this phone; he wanted to see those photos again, he wanted to see his mother's face once more.
Reopening his phone, Victor discovered that his mother had written down almost every detail of their lives. Most of it was about him, with a few pictures of scenery. Victor scrolled through the pages for a long time but couldn't find a single selfie of his mother.
He had no choice but to use his hacking skills to start searching for images directly. But as he scrolled through them, he froze.
He took the phone in his hand, first flipped it to the side, then to the back, and then held it up as if he had discovered something incredible. He jumped up from the sofa.
This phone is continuously emitting unfamiliar signals.
Since he became a cyborg, he has been able to perfectly read all electrical signals in his surroundings, and even materialize some of them, as if he were creating something out of thin air.
The cell phone signal was very weak and mixed in with other household appliances, so he didn't notice it at first. But once he delved into the phone's system, he realized something was wrong.
The phone wasn't connected to the internet, so it couldn't be a network signal. He didn't make any more calls. The signal wasn't electromagnetic radiation generated by the phone itself, but rather a type of radio wave being transmitted outwards.
Victor quickly grabbed the phone and began using his intuition to examine all of its systems. Finally, he found an erroneous program.
This is a completely hidden program, invisible from the phone's system, meaning it's impossible for an ordinary person to find it. Even a top-tier hacker like Victor, with superpowers, had some trouble finding it. This proves that the person who wrote this program is extremely skilled, reaching the level of a top-tier hacker, something far beyond the capabilities of an amateur.
Victor began to decipher what kind of signal it was sending. He quickly discovered it was a location signal transmitter; the phone was constantly sending location information to some place.
Victor stood there, stunned, unable to comprehend what was happening. How could his mother's phone have such a high-tech backdoor program, and why was it broadcasting location information?
Suddenly, Victor seemed to remember something. He first put his phone in his pocket, then pulled a gun from a nearby drawer and carried it with him. This wasn't for self-defense, but rather in case someone searched his house and found the weapon, which could lead to his conviction. Next, he took all his identification documents and flew from his balcony into the night sky.
He followed the signal, flying south until he landed in a desolate wilderness. He searched for a long time before finally finding the entrance to a semi-underground air-raid shelter. But upon entering, he discovered it was deserted.
The other party was clearly a professional; they left no trace whatsoever. Not even a single footprint or fingerprint, let alone any documents or records. This only confirmed Victor's suspicions.
He took a deep breath, turned and flew in another direction, arriving at the laboratory where his father worked. There was no one there either; what was once a huge high-tech base was now covered in dust.
Victor was going crazy. He stood at the entrance of the experimental base, roaring madly. After pacing around a few times, he took out his phone and called his father.
"Where are you?!"
"What's wrong? Victor? I..."
"Where the hell are you?!"
"I'm sorry, I can't tell you." The voice on the other end of the phone was slightly breathless. He said, "I can't reveal my location. Otherwise..."
“You’ve been exposed. South of Ventura, Los Angeles, right? I’m coming to find you right away.”
"Don't……"
After hanging up the phone, Victor suddenly took to the air and flew towards Los Angeles. He had reached top speed, and the city lights and the textures of the earth became blurred in his vision. He heard his phone ring, but he didn't care at all.
That man would only ever say "no": he wouldn't come home, he wouldn't come to watch his games, he wouldn't go to his mother's cemetery on the anniversary of her death. He told them nothing, but the greatest tragedy that befell them was brought upon them by him, and he would make them pay the price.
He flew all the way to Ventura, Los Angeles, where countless signals materialized before his eyes. In that instant, his entire world became an ocean of 0s and 1s, and he precisely locked onto some unusual data, turning his gaze to one spot.
He flew over there again. When he landed at the laboratory entrance, he knew he had come to the right place. Victor stepped inside, but he didn't see his father; instead, he saw fully armed agents.
“Victor Stone, right?” A fully armed agent walked up to him, handed him a file, and said, “Take a look at this. Find all the data in the computer that the man in the video is holding. Otherwise, your father won’t come back.”
Victor's eyes widened in shock.
The agent walked back and said, "We know you're a hacking genius, capable of hacking into the academic system and changing grades while still in school. Now use that ability for something more meaningful. The future of America awaits your decision."
"What the hell are you doing! Where did you put my father?!" Victor roared.
"I also want to thank you for giving us the address. He had been refusing to cooperate with us before, and the military was also helping him cover up the address, trying to extort money from him and then demand a high price when we were pushed to the limit. Fortunately, we had intercepted the conversation between the two of you, otherwise we might not have been able to find him so quickly."
Victor immediately realized what was happening. His father had indeed gone into hiding, but he was hiding because someone was watching him. If he hadn't hidden, he would have become a hostage. In the end, when Victor came to find him, he revealed his address. He had become a hostage after all.
“Tell me where he is,” Victor said. “I won’t do anything for you if I can’t confirm his safety.”
The agent seemed to have anticipated his reaction and immediately turned on the electronic screen next to him. His father still looked somewhat tired, and there were clearly armed personnel standing behind him.
This wasn't a video call; it had been pre-recorded and stored, so there was no signal to trace. The other party was clearly wary of him. Victor frowned as he watched the video.
He had already recorded the video through his webcam while watching it. Now the video is playing on a loop in his mind at an extremely high speed, and he is extracting usable information from it.
Suddenly, something caught his attention. There was a fountain pen clipped to his father's shirt pocket. He wasn't sure if his father had this habit, but the pen's design was rather unusual.
From this angle, you can see a circular badge on the top of the pen cap. After a wide search, Victor discovered that this was an extremely expensive pen, far beyond the reach of people in his social class. Moreover, this pen was not a mass-produced model, but a limited edition handcrafted, and the arrangement of the gems on the clip of each pen was different, meaning that each one was a unique piece.
Victor searched again for the arrangement of the gemstones and discovered that the pen had last appeared at a press conference by Alexander Luther, the owner of the Luther Group.
The search results immediately revealed news of Luthor's arrest, followed by news of his imprisonment for kidnapping Superman, and finally the name and information of the prison where Luthor would be held after being convicted in court.
Belliv Prison – a prison specifically designed to detain people with superpowers.
"It must be here," Victor thought. It was precisely to protect himself that the hostages were sent to a prison specifically for people with superpowers; there must be something there that could resist superpowers—someone had reminded him of this with this pen.