The Orbist

Chapter 35

    "Where's the note?" Captain O'Bry questioned us.

    "Funny you say that, we've been asking ourselves the same question." I responded, and turned to Elian and Barry who sat silently to my left. "Am I right, guys? We've been asking ourselves 'Where's the note?', right? Get it?"

 I was only replied to by two cold stares.

    "Listen, you little brats." O'Bry shouted. "Especially you." He nodded towards me, frustrated.

    "Bite me." I muttered.

    "Ms. Tordjman told us that she saw you three and three other garbage kids at the scene right after that tragedy happened. And so did our friend. Want to know her name?"

    "I don't see why not."

    "Her name is Video Footage."

    "Wow, that's a horrible name."

 He looked at me like I was a mentally ill puppy.

    "Please, please, just shut up." He ordered, and pointed at Elian and Barry. "From now on, only these two can talk freely."

 I slumped.

    "Listen, sir. We know it looks bad." Elian admitted. "But we could explain. See, we are kids with incredible superpowers. I can make stuff hot and cold with a touch, Cayson can see stuff, and Barry can turn into a tree. We've been chased by a certain organization called the Ecators. They have tried to capture us multiple times, but so far we've been able to escape their grasp. They have this mysterious kingpin of the name Mr. Mac. No one knows how he looks like, except us, and he's been killing people just to bring our attention to his letters for Cayson. Our theory of why he's going through all this work is because he's a psychopath who gets bored far too easily. So when this librarian stabbed herself with the pen, we think it was because she was under some sort of Ecator mind control. Now Cayson thought this was his fault because he should of looked throughout the library more in depth to positively ensure Mr. Mac wasn't in the area. He felt it was his responsibility to deliver that picture to her family. It was then when he discovered the note behind it. As soon we left, being the complete imbecile that he is, he dropped the note while we ran away. We decided to come back to the library to see if we could find anymore clues based off the small peek he took at the letter before leaving."

 The captain sat down, letting all this information sink in. He put his face in his hands and began pondering. We waited until he finally brought his head up before he looked at us.

    "Barry, do you honestly-be honest- approve the story that boy just informed me of?"

    "Absolutely, sir." Barry nodded.

    "Okay. Okay. Here's what I think.  I don't want anything to do with you three. You are all insane, and I don't want that on my hands. So-so if you tell me what you saw in your peek of the letter, I'll let you three loonies go."

    "Fair enough." I decided. "I saw 5 numbers and '12:00'."

    "And what were these 5 numbers?"

 I hesitated.

    "11...."

 He nodded, gesturing me to continue.

    "777." I finished.

    "777?"

    "That's right."

    "It sounds made up, Cayson."

    "Yeah, it does." I replied.

 O'Bry let out a grunt and grabbed his mug of coffee from the desk, proceeding to take a long sip from the rim of it.

    "Can I have some of that?"

    "Get out."

    "Can you just do us a quick solid?" I begged.

    "What could you possibly want?" He growled exasperatedly.

 As soon as we left the room, we were all grinning from ear to ear.

    "You continue to impress me, Cayson." Elian admitted.

    "You just had to take a look at that guy, man." I brushed my shoulder. "You could tell he was already neck-deep in crap he had to take care of. All I had to do was make us look like a bunch of idiots and he would drop us like a sack of potatoes."

    "So what now?" Barry asked.

    "Now, since that man was kind enough to let us use his computer for a minute, we find out what 11301 means."

 We walked into his office, and I proceeded to quickly plop myself down on his rolling chair. The other's stood beside me, and watched the screen.

 I turned the computer on and clicked on Google Chrome. I was brought to Bing, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of having the application of Google Chrome, but I managed to shake my pet peeve off to focus. I typed "Google Maps" into the Bing search bar, and my first result was of course the site.

 I clicked on it, and waited for the following page to load. As soon as it was done, I typed into the search bar "Arkansas 11301." I was given streets from different cities, all possibilities. I had to be more specific. "Little Rock, Arkansas 11301." 11301 Arkansas River Trail..... 11301 Arkansas Trail.... 11301 Arkansas Valley Drive...Gosh dangit, I still had several possibilities. In anger, I slammed the space bar, which revealed one more result. 11301 Financial Centre Parkway. It was as probable of being our address as the other ones, but for some strange reason I had a good feeling about it. I clicked on Street View to get a better look at it. A white hotel with blue tinted windows.....holy lord, this looked like the first hotel we slept in in Arkansas. Mr. Mac would definitely choose this! Several cars were parked in front of it.

    "I don't have good news." I expressed aloud.

 Barry and Elian looked at me, concerned.

    "I have great news!" I jumped up happily. "I know the address! So 12 o'clock, tomorrow, we officially will be talking with the Mackster."

    "Hey, guys, I think I've got even better news." Elian spoke up.

    "What could possibly be better than-"

 That's when I saw them. Ralph, Bryan, and Levi, all staring back at us. Yes! We ran up to each other, and started blabbering.

    "I missed you guys so much!" Barry blubbered, somehow hugging all three of them.

    "Seriously? We've been apart for like an hour." I grumbled.

    "It still burns." Barry sniffled.

    "Why are you guys even here?! I thought you didn't want to be with us!"

    "Well, Cayson," Ralph smiled. "We were going to the library when we saw you guys screaming and running away from two cops."

    "Psssh."

    "We realized if we left you here, you would soon enough attract Ecators, and we couldn't let that happen, or Mr. Mac would call off the arrangement. But it looks like you took care of that yourself."

    "Yeah, I did."

    "Since, we're all here..." Ralph continued. "Perhaps you and I can put our differences aside to work towards helping the people around us."

    "Oh, I'm so glad you said that." I blubbered just like Barry, and leaned in for a hug. "I missed you guys so much. Don't ever let me let myself leave you again."

    "That didn't make a lot of sense." Bryan informed me.

    "Shut up and bring it in."

 After we all hugged each other hugs of joy and all the mushy stuff was out of the way, we had work to do. We left the police station and all sat down behind a certain Cuban restaurant. Ralph pulled out a strange bottle of soda with a deformed top. I looked at it, then him, and raised my eyebrows, waiting for his usual Ralph-y explanation. He chuckled, and held it in front of me.

    "It's a bottle bomb."

    "Bottle what?"