He was staring at a cosmic daylight screen saver on the phone he's holding in his left hand as if waiting for someone to call. He was slouched in his seat and started to feel bored while his mind is floating somewhere in the air. He looked from left to right and saw usual things that happened in a hospital: patient transports and other medical workers passing by and closed his eyes.
He was at his thirtieth sigh when a voice from the corridor echoed and said, "I saw the kids at the bus stop waiting for a bus to come just a while ago..." She waved her hand as she approached him sitting on the chair fronting the ICU. She was holding a bag full of groceries and a laptop bag hung on her shoulder. Her bun was slightly messed, her eyes were dragged by stress, and her complexion was slightly off the normal. "Did they came to visit him here?" she continued.
"Ahh.." Reiko nodded. He took a deep breath and went to show that he was not tired of everything that was happening. He knew he needs to be strong for this girl and for his kid. "They've just spent all afternoon here with me. I mean, we can't just get inside even if I nag at the nurses." he smiled but it slowly turned into a smirk. "Only you can do that." he raised an eyebrow.
"Oh sorry, I was busy doing stuff and I'm just glad I have him all this time." she pointed to the man standing behind her and sighed. "I ran onto him on the way to the Bureau and said he was also going here at the hospital so we're here together."
"Hi!!" the man waving his calloused hand as he smiled at Reiko. His afro was tied behind his head and he was holding a basket of flowers with bottled drinks in it on the other hand.
"Ohh, hello there Ned. It's been a while." Reiko said, standing to reach Ned's hand. His heart felt a weight getting lifted as he saw these two right at the moment he was about to break down. "I'm sorry if I hadn't got in touch these past few months."
"Yeah, been a while, pal," Ned said reaching his hand. "I've been busy all these time too and--"
"Let's get inside. Let's not talk here." Charlie grabbed Ned's wrist and drag him inside the ICU; Reiko immediately followed.
Ned and Reiko sat on the couch and brought their things on top of the center table. Charlie dragged a chair towards the two and took a glimpse of his son behind her before she sat in front of the table.
"It has really been a pretty while when the three of us got together around a table like this, right?" Ned sloughed at the couch. "Feels nostalgic."
"Ahh, it has really been a while," Reiko said, "It was still way back in college if I'm not mistaken?"
"Yeah..." Charlie grinned. "Right when Ned was trying to court someone."
"Oh, I remember!" Reiko smirked. "This is when we tried to console him when he was busted on the first day of courtship, right?"
"Oi!!!" Ned threw his hand of Reiko's face and grabbed his mouth and Reiko tried to struggle. "That's below the belt, idiot!"
"Those days.." Reiko sighed. "Back in the days when we were young and wild and free."
"Correction." Charlotte crossed her arms. "We were young, yes. But not wild, and not so free. And we're not that financially capable like you do, moron."
"Yeah, I'm with Charlie. I never thought that gullible kid would become the top of the world by becoming the CEO of ORION. Dang it, man..." Ned slapped his shoulder. "If I have known I would never let you copy my homework before."
Reiko raised an eyebrow. "I copied your homework? Since when?"
Ned looked away and managed a little laugh.
"Either way, don't be so indifferent, Ned. You've slapped me twice now and I'm letting you off, that means you're not a stranger." Reiko smirked.
"Oh yeah, don't file a case on me now, Rei." Ned did a defending stance. "Now that I remember how furious the CEO was. It was all on the news so you really can't blame me if I do some---"
"Shut up.." Reiko poked Ned's side and looked away. "Hhhm, I wish Markus can join our lousy chats right now."
"Did anything happen when I'm gone?" Charlotte asked.
"No." Reiko replied. "He hasn't even moved an inch."
"It was my first time in here, Charlie," Ned said as he grabbed a bottle of juice from his basket. "I mean, Markus was fond of hospitals and clinics but seeing him on that bed with all those stuff attached to him felt different." he opened the bottle and stared at it.
"Was he that sickly ever since?" Reiko asked. He has never known that fact since he was not with his child while he's growing up. And when he thought of those times he missed on his son's life, he still feels awkward and indifferent.
"Not sickly, but a Yankee." Ned laughed a little.
"Have you heard that, Marky?!" Charlotte raised her voice and slightly titled her head in her son's direction. "Uncle Ned is spouting lies."
"That was not a lie tho..." Ned pouted and drank the whole bottle. "You've been a trouble maker since childhood, you kid!" he put the bottle on top of the table like the way he put a wrench on his toolbox. "You better wake up now if you don't want me to spill some beans here with your parents."
"Don't kid him like that, Ned." Reiko's face was drenched with the same amount of confusion and mockery.
"Don't listen to them, Markus." Charlie rolled her eyes. "I'll go smack these two to shut up," she smirked.
The air then was filled with laughter and smiles. But then the three of them felt the guilt of laughing despite their situation.
"I'm sorry I was just carried out." Ned wiped the tears from his eyes.
"We all did." Reiko took a deep breath and stared at the door in a moment of silence. "I have something to say regarding the latest reports on Orion's investigation."
"Me too..." Charlie said. "Let me start, Rei." she opened her tab and showed them the reports she got from their office. "It's been 3 months since the hacker attacked the city but until now, we only got a few traces of the things he left behind the scene. The programs and files were all erased like burning paper. There's nothing we can come up with the ashes he left behind."
"The Orion was also doing their best to retrieve as much information so we can share it with the investigation," Reiko said. "But things are still in process and we also have to deal with confidentiality. But if ever I got some nice juice, I'll definitely send it to you."
"I also did some research and I only found out a few things about what happened." Ned looked down and stared at the floor. "Ne, where were you when the CALLS happened?"
"Ahh. I was entering the city by the by-pass bridge at Zone 24 when suddenly my phones rang at the same time." Reiko said.
"So you were from outside the city when the Blackout happened?" Ned said and opened his laptop. He recorded what Reiko was saying.
"Yeah. There was a conference at Vanadis that ended on the morning of that incident. I was driving my way to the city when those calls happened. I wasn't able to take any of it because the car in front of me lost control so I prioritized evading it and parked my ride at the side of the road." He reached his bag and went to get a watch where a monitor flashed at the moment he placed it on top of the table. "..when I reached the phone, the ringing ended and all of these things confronted me like a flash." The monitor showed a ton of pictures captured at the very moment of the Blackout. "The traffic was immense and an immediate lockdown was issued by the officers on patrol at the entry point of the city. The cars behind me were stuck and the people were shocked at what they saw. People inside the city of Aurum were easily shunned by an unknown thing. The officers who responded to the traffic at the bridge were also affected when they're in range of the Blackout. That's when they realized that it has a range since we, in the bridge, were not affected by what is happening inside the city." Reiko shoved his head in distress. "I scanned the area with the GPS in my laptop, put up a dish on top of my car, and got some readings on a frequency from one of the towers but I cannot overwrite it from there."
"And which tower was that?" Charlie asked.
"Apollo," Reiko responded. "I need to get to ORION to forcibly stop the system or I can get help from others that is why I wasn't able to stop it right away. I also don't have enough data to outrun the program. If I forcibly kill the frequencies at that moment, which I can do if I overwrite the system through our satellites, but it would have caused damage in a worldwide scale." He turned his gaze to Ned and said, "That's when I receive a call from Ned, on a special frequency we used since college. So, I knew it was a large-scale emergency."
"Thanks for rushing to Zone 11 and getting the kids to safety." Ned placed his hand on Reiko's shoulder. "I can't do much for them at that moment since the call started. The alarm we set up if a large-scale attack happens, turned up so I immediately did a scan on the whole city. Turns out, it was in a pretty nasty state." Ned shook his head. "I tried to contact the kids but communications were down and the covert transmission line we have is also partially down due to the interference we detected." He showed them his laptop's monitor and continued saying, "I hurried to activate the Vaccine system to kill the virus while trying to reach the kids, Charlie, my wife, and somehow," he turned to Reiko and said like he's just forced to say "--you."
Charlotte turned red in laughter.
"Yeah yeah" Reiko rolled brushed him off and continued saying, "but that program was still incomplete so you have to manually initiate the activation codes of the vaccine."
"Thanks for leaving just after the planning phase, Mr. President." Ned rolled his eyes. "It did a lot of back pain on me."
"I apologized for already a hundred about that now," Reiko smirked. "But thanks to that the hack at Apollo has not lasted for the whole duration of the Blackout."
"It took me 5 hours, 54 minutes, and 34 seconds to defeat their hack," Ned said.
"So if you've disabled their hack, how come did they not stop right away?" Charlie asked.
"When the die has been cast, there's no turning it back. All I did was cut off their command so that they can't send another command to the Androids."
"That is why we still have to fight those people even after the Apollo connection was cut off, right?" Charlie said.
"Yeah. I'm sorry about that." Ned said.
"So what did Markus defeat at the Cafe?" Charlie asked.
"It was the hacker, and not the entire hack. " Reiko replied. "The invasion was done in two phases." Reiko typed something on the floating monitor and showed some data on it. "The first phase was the transmission from Apollo. It made the whole city to Blackout and overwrite their brains using those interferences that highjacked their system making them as what Dave called them, ANDROIDS." he continued.
"When the transmission was cut off, the Androids can't add their numbers anymore that made their army vulnerable," Ned explained. "But as I have said, I only cut off their transmission. The real deal was done in the second phase."
"And what about that second phase?" Charlotte asked again.
"It was the cultivation phase," Reiko explained. The figures and images on his floating monitor also changed. "It was implanted at the Sunny Cafe and that's what the Phantom Algorithm rewrote back to normal."
"During that time, the Virus took hold of the entire Orion system controlling Aurum that made him do destructions via command lines and programmed files," Ned explained. "The game they've played was also embedded at the cultivation phase where the players would fall to apathy if they lose because of the pre-programmed bias on the headgear they used."
"That is why Markus has done a great job on creating the PA that helped to bring everything to normal." Reiko said. "If he hadn't defeated the hacker, even the game itself, Orion system might have self-destructed and everything we have now would turn into scratch."
"But still we don't know where the real culprit had escaped to," Charlie said.
"I kinda know where because of the tracking I and Louige had been doing these past months since the incident." Reiko hit keys on the floating monitor again and a world map showed on the screen. "After following the slightest track he left, we found a 28% chance of locating the culprit's whereabouts."
"Really?!" Ned exclaimed. "Then where is that?"
"I still can't say for certain" Reiko hesitantly said. "If we confront them, we need to have solid evidence since they hold much power in the international market. One false move can spell disaster."
"I don't care." Charlotte crossed her arms and glared at Reiko. "They hurt my son, they need to pay a thousandfold."
"I know. They need to pay for everything they've done." Reiko said. "But we have to do it the right way. If we happen to confront them without proper shreds of evidence, Markus might have sacrificed for nothing."
Charlotte realized she has gone out of the line. Her thoughts were clouded by hatred and fear of losing her child. Her hands were shaking in frustration, guilt, and anger at the same time. Reiko was right, she thought. If they act now, Markus will only be put in much danger.
"You're right. I acted out of anger." Charlotte grabbed a bottle and took a sip on it. "Then what's that place?"
"Scorpio."