Victor sat on the sofa, fiddling with his mother's phone. After a while, he leaned his head on the sofa, then looked up at the ceiling, remembering the day of the car accident.
"I'm really very sorry, Vic. Your Dad can't come to watch your game. He really has very important matters..."
"This is my first championship in life." The black youth sitting in the passenger seat was not appreciative at all. He said, "He hasn't been home for half a year. He doesn't care about you or my feelings. He is not a good father, nor a good husband..."
"He has his reasons." The black woman in the driver's seat sighed and said, "It's his hard work that has given us this good life today. You should know that playing sports is very expensive. We live in a good community, and thousands of US dollars disappear like water every month, yet I can even have savings. This is all because your dad works hard."
"Working hard, researching alien monsters? Please, do you take me for a three-year-old? There are no aliens!" The youth shook his head, turned away, not looking at his mother.
The mother was also somewhat helpless, turned to look at him, and wanted to say something. But the next second, a truck collided from the side. Victor doesn't remember the events very clearly.
When he woke up again, he wasn't lying in the hospital or at home, but in a laboratory. He saw his father, whom he hadn't seen for a long time, and also saw the monstrous self he had become.
He couldn't play ball anymore, couldn't even go to school. His life was completely over. At least before discovering his superpowers, that was what he thought.
However, the immense power brought by his mechanical body quickly allowed him to rediscover himself. After the accident, the first time he mustered the courage to go out, he saw a mother and child wandering before an ATM on a snowy night, unable to withdraw even 11 US dollars.
He gave them some money, obviously not his, but coaxed out of the ATM using hacker skills. Their eyes looked at him with admiration, making Victor feel alive again. Later, he contacted his old classmate Deri, initially intending to sponsor several welfare homes, but Deri said it would be better to support down-and-out black communities, so that in case of trouble, they could pull him out.
Victor simply enjoyed being admired by others and soon agreed. He would regularly gather some money and hand it over to Deri, letting him send it to the communities while also meeting with local mob bosses a few times.
This was the only work Victor did after the accident: using his hacker skills to gather money and send it to the poor. He was always busy with this, letting it make him forget the painful accident.
Over time, he had helped almost all the surrounding communities. Every community knew of a masked metal-faced stranger who would give them money when they needed it most. Victor also enjoyed their respect and felt life could continue this way.
But now, seeing his mother's relic again, Victor was filled with mixed emotions. He was forced to recall that the painful accident which took his mother's life happened because of his argument with her. Victor was full of guilt, almost unable to breathe.
Since his childhood, his father had always been very busy with work, with no time to accompany him. If it weren't for the money sent constantly and occasional returns home, he would think he had no father.
And his mother had always been very good to him, concerned about everything regarding him. She had once personally went to school to apologize when he messed up by using hacker skills to change exam scores, helping him deal with a mess. And now, there was nothing left.
Thinking of this, Victor felt sadness rising, gripping the phone tightly. His mother's face in memory was already clear enough, but he still wanted to see her, still hoped to wait for her to open the door and ask if she was hungry when she returned from grocery shopping.
Tears flowed down, Victor wiped his face, and reopened the phone. He remembered his mother liked using this phone to take pictures; he wanted to see those photos, to see his mother's face again.
Reopening the phone to browse, Victor found that his mother had recorded almost every detail of life. Most were about him, a few were landscapes. Victor pressed the keys for a long time but didn't find a single selfie of his mother.
He had to use his hacker skills, directly searching the images. But after flipping through, he froze.
He held the phone, flipping it to the side, then to the back, then raised it up, as if discovering something beyond belief. He stood up from the sofa with a "whoosh."
This phone was continuously emitting a strange signal.
Since he transformed into a mechanical cyborg, he could perfectly read all telecommunication signals in the surrounding environment, even materializing certain signals, seeming like creating objects out of thin air.
The signals the phone emitted were very weak, mixed with other appliances, which he initially didn't notice. However, once deep inside the phone system, he realized something was amiss.
This phone wasn't connected to any network, thus couldn't be network signals. He wasn't making calls either. This signal wasn't electromagnetic radiation produced by the phone itself but a type of wave sent outward.
Victor promptly grabbed the phone, utilizing his talent to inspect all the systems of the phone. Finally, he found an anomaly program.
This was a completely hidden program, invisible from the phone's system, meaning ordinary people wouldn't notice it. Even Victor, a top-notch hacker with superpowers, took some effort to find this program. This proved the person who wrote this program was of extremely high level, reaching top hacker standards, definitely not what an amateur could do.
Victor began decrypting it, to understand what signals it was sending. He soon discovered it was a locator signal transmitter, this phone constantly sending location information to some place.
Victor froze on the spot, unable to fathom how this could be. Why did his mother's phone have such a high-tech backdoor program, and why would it report location information?
Suddenly, Victor seemed to have thought of something. He first tucked the phone into his pocket, then rummaged through the drawer nearby to take out a gun. This wasn't for self-defense but was afraid someone might search his house later and convict him for having weapons. Next, he took all his ID certificates, then flew up into the night sky from the balcony.
He traced the signal, flying south all the way, and finally stopped in a desolate wilderness. He searched here for half a day and finally found a semi-underground bunker door. But after entering, he found that it had long been deserted.
The other party was obviously professional, leaving no trace behind. Not to mention documents, there weren't even footprints or fingerprints. But this made Victor even more certain of his suspicion.
He took a deep breath, turned, and flew in another direction, arriving at the laboratory where his father worked. There was also no one here; the entire large high-tech base was covered in dust.
Victor nearly went mad, standing at the entrance of the experimental base, roaring frantically. After a few laps, he took out his phone and called his father.
"Where are you?!"
"What's wrong, Victor? I..."
"Where the hell are you?!!!"
"Sorry, I can't tell you." The voice on the other end of the line was slightly panting, "I can't expose my location. Otherwise..."
"You're already exposed. South of Ventura, Los Angeles, right? I'll come find you right away."
"Don't..."
Hanging up the phone, Victor suddenly soared into the air, heading straight for Los Angeles. He reached maximum speed, the city lights and the lines of the earth blurred in his view. He heard his phone ring, but he didn't care.
That man always said "no": not coming home, not watching his games, not going to the cemetery on his mother's death anniversary. He didn't tell them anything, but the biggest disaster that befell his mother and him was because of him; he would definitely make him pay the price.
Flying all the way to Ventura, Los Angeles, countless signals materialized before his eyes. In that instant, his whole world became an ocean of 0s and 1s, and he precisely locked onto some unusual data, looking back to a spot.
He flew over in that direction again. When he stopped at the laboratory entrance, he knew he had found the right place. Victor stepped inside, but he didn't see his father, only fully armed agents.
"Victor Stone, right?" A fully armed agent walked up to him, handed him a file, and said, "Look at this and extract all the data from the computer held by the person in this video. Otherwise, your father won't come back."
Victor's eyes widened in shock.
The agent walked back, then said, "We know you're a genius hacker. You hacked into the school system to change grades while still in school. Now use that skill for something more meaningful. America's future is waiting for you to decide."
"What the hell are you up to? Where did you take my father?!!" Victor roared.
"You should thank yourself for giving us the address. He kept refusing to cooperate with us, and the military helped him cover the address, trying to blackmail us for a high price once we were desperate. Fortunately, we tapped your call with him; otherwise, we might not have found him so quickly."
Victor immediately realized. His father indeed hid because someone was targeting him. If he didn't hide, he would become a hostage. When he came to find him, he exposed the address, and he ultimately became a hostage.
"Tell me where he is," Victor said. "If I can't confirm his safety, I won't do anything for you."
The agent seemed to have expected his reaction and directly turned on the nearby electronic screen. His father still looked a bit weary, and armed personnel were clearly standing behind him.
This video wasn't a live feed but pre-recorded and stored, so there was no signal to trace. They were clearly guarding against him. Victor frowned as he watched the video.
While watching the video, he had already recorded it through the camera. The video was now looping at high speed in his brain, and he was extracting usable information from it.
Suddenly, something caught his attention. His father's shirt pocket had a pen clipped onto it. He wasn't sure whether his father had this habit, but the pen's design was peculiar.
From this angle, he could see a circular emblem pattern on the pen's cap. After conducting a wide search, Victor discovered that this was an extremely expensive pen, one their class could never afford. Moreover, this pen wasn't mass-produced; it was a hand-crafted limited edition, with the gemstones on each pen clip arranged uniquely, meaning each one was unique.
After searching based on the gemstone arrangement, Victor found that the last appearance of this pen was at a press conference of the Luther Group's owner, Alexander Luther.
Soon, he found the news of Luther's arrest, then the news of him taking Superman hostage and getting imprisoned, and finally the name and information of the prison where Luther was to be held after the court found him guilty.
Bellevue Prison—a prison specially designed to detain superpower users.
This must be the place, Victor thought. To guard against him, they put the hostage in a prison specially designed for superpower users. There must be something there that can resist superpowers—someone used this pen to alert him.