James took another turn and hid in a large shrub and accessed his situation. He touched his face, which already had multiple cuts and his legs that was burning with pain.
John passed the shrub James was hiding. He then stopped and looked around the road, slowly turning his head and looking for movements. "James! Come out here, you stupid bastard! Do you think you can come here and ruin my family's life and just go away with it? Today I'm going to show you how to be a responsible prick." John shouted out. James held his breath as John slowly approached the shrub he was hiding on.
"I'm coming James, I'm coming," John said slowly and approached the shrub. As much as James wanted to run, his limbs were not cooperating with him. "Gotcha!" John said and lashed a shrub, but James was not there, so he left it and approached another shrub. James could see John lashing on the shrubs in front of him. James kept this pattern for a few more bushes.
At this moment, James could no longer move as he was bleeding slowly, causing him to be dizzy the more. "Argh!" he groaned softly, as he tried to adjust his body. His skin was severely lacerated, making his normally dark skin to be very red. How hard did this lunatic hit me?
From his blurry vision, James saw Martha rush over to John grabbed the belt from his hand and pleaded in tears for him to come home. "Why would leave him to just go after what he did to us? I have been silent all these while Martha, so don't even try and stop me when I'm emancipating my frustration. Let me find that boy and deal with him a little so that I'll be okay with myself".
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
James passed out more than three times. He was so weak he could no longer move a finger. He would only lay on the shrub and stare at the sky. "This is probably the time I'm going to die. I cannot believe I was going to die by a whip.
"I'm sorry aunt Martha for bringing you all these troubles, I should have rejected the offer when you told me I was going to live with your family. I'm sorry mom and dad for not being strong enough for you. I hope Martha would maintain your memories. I am looking forward to meeting two of you and we'll become one family again."
James' eyes started to close as his surroundings became blurry. He could see texts in front of his eyes as the chip in his brain made its final attempt to save his life. This time, James burst out in tears as his emotions began fluctuating rapidly. He saw John's outline as he hovered him with rage in his face as he said something James could not discern before his body slumped and his heart finally stopped.
"System critical, attempting repairs…. Repairs failed, fatal error reported…
"Booting system to recovery mode…boot successful…
"initialize system repairs… initialize successfully…
"Attempting to restore body functions… Attempting to restore body functions…
Fatal error… fatal error… system cannot be repaired… sending logs to base…
Starting PUD [Preserve Upon Death] module….
"Neural system is shutting down… PUD is pulsing electrical charges on the neural system, see logs…
"Firing electrical charge on memory partition…
"Checking processes…. Check process successfully, no errors found…
"Sending an emergency signal to base, final attempt…
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Amy had been monitoring AIRC for a while but could not see Henry blueprints in the building. She assumed he knew what Amy was planning, that's why he was afraid to come to work. "Where are you Henry?" she asked herself as she adjusted the audio equipment on her dashboard.
Amy had killed half of the employees in AIRC, causing her to be on the run. The CIA personally marked her as Red Notice. She was the number one most wanted criminal in all of New York City, so consequently, she could not go anywhere freely.
Staying in New York was already too risky for her, so she stayed here in Boston, which served two purposes, one, to avoid going to prison, and two, to keep a close eye on James in case things went south. It's like hitting two birds with one stone.
Amy had been surviving by doing freelance work on the dark web. Sometimes she would hack into the government's servers, bank servers and the likes and steal information and sell them back to the web, which earned her so much money she could not even spend in her lifetime.
Of course, she converted all her wealth to cryptocurrency to keep her as inconspicuous as possible, and crypto being untraceable made it a viable option to prevent tracking from anyone.
Amy decided to drive away earlier than usual. Moments later, she pulled over to a motel, wore her disguises and checked herself on the mirror before alighting off and heading to the motel.
"It's $10 a night ma'am," the receptionist said smiling. "Make it a week, thank you," Amy said with a different voice as she paid and headed to the room.
After making sure she was not being followed, she closed the door and locked it, then sat on the bed before dropping the backpack on her back and opening it.
She brought out her laptop and her headphone and turned them on. Moments later, she connected to the internet and typed a few commands, bringing up a 3D map of the world. She then pasted a co-ordinate on the search bar and the map zoomed in to a place in Boston.
"Alright James, how are you doing?" Amy whispered to herself. She had successfully hacked into the chip, something she was surprised about. While she was working on mapping Henry's whereabouts, her PC beeped, notifying her that a vulnerability was found on the chip, which she took advantage of and successfully connected to it.
Though she could not alter the functions of the chip, she was able to constantly locate and listen to James brain activities, which cemented her suspicion that the chip was on James's brain.
Amy was staring at her screen when she noticed that something was amiss. James brain wave was slowing down alarmingly. "What the hell?" she was taken aback. Something was wrong with James. She checked the logs that the chip generated and was shocked.
James was dying!