The Family

In the blink of an eye, most of the day passed and it was almost time to be released from school. About an hour was left and Henry was standing in the bathroom looking into the mirror. Shortly before this he had felt that he needed to get out of class to re-collect himself, which of course meant releasing some pent up 'stress'.

He was holding a wad of paper towels in his right hand after he had checked that none of the stalls were occupied and he was alone. Just as he was about to continue on though, his stress disappeared as he noticed his own reflection in the corner of his eye.

Usually he wouldn't of thought twice about his own reflection. It is just a reflection and after all everyone has one. The thing that caught his attention though is that for a split second he felt that his reflection wasn't just that but an entirely different person.

The feeling passed quickly though as he stared into the mirror looking into his dark brown almost pitch black eyes. His skin as pale as a vampire's from lack of exposure to the outdoors along with his slightly long hair resting against his ears and occasionally obscuring his vision.

'No wonder people avoided me in the past.' Henry thought to himself, completely tossing the earlier feeling to the back of his head. His thoughts were interrupted though as the door to the bathroom opened and the janitor entered.

Immediately the janitor noticed him and was about to say something before noticing the excessive amount of paper towels Henry was holding onto. After which instead of a greeting he gave a deathly glare.

Henry just smiled and nodded at the janitor in return as he threw the towels away and promptly left the bathroom. He noticed the look the janitor gave him but he simply did not care and went on about the rest of the day as if nothing happened. Before long school was released as the weekend began.

Henry stood in the chaotic entrance waiting for his 'friends' as students moved and pushed each other around trying to get out of school as fast as they could. After some time had passed he noticed one of his friends out of the corner of his eyes.

What he saw though, immediately led to him narrowing his eyes and closely watching his every movement even going as far as to try and read his lips. When he looked over he immediately realized that his friend was talking to someone who's back was facing him.

This person's back was someone who he remembered all too well, the person who had put him in a miserable state and had likely even played a part in his brother's death, Nathan. He could not glean anything from reading his friends lips of course but he still tried.

He wasn't completely empty handed though he now knew who to be the most suspicious of when it came to which one of his friends could be in Nathan's pocket. 'So it's Steven then?', Henry quietly thought to himself as his suspicions began to root deeply in his mind.

With Nathan once again entering his mind he thought back to the information he had gained. Even though only a day had passed he still managed to gain some information from the name he now had.

On the surface his father apparently owned a nationwide construction and excavation company which was the reason he was so wealthy. There was something else though beneath the surface which made Henry much more cautious when it came to Nathan and his family.

This was the fact that both his mother and father seemed to have connections to the criminal underground. From what he could piece together his mother was not as cautious as his father as she had been charged with bribery and blackmail of significant government officials.

His father on the other hand was someone that cast a slight shadow in his heart. When searching initially he found absolutely nothing on Nathan's father, not even a late parking ticket. Henry of course knew better though as from the released court records the charges against his mom could be led to his father.

The only reason neither of them was behind bars is because she seemed to have unwavering loyalty as she would admit nothing and despite the evidence, the case was dropped due to some bullshit technicality.

As such he decided to turn to the deep web and try to gain information from some forums of people who commonly had nothing better to do than investigate or people who commonly indulged in conspiracies.

He of course took everything with a large grain of salt but he seemed to piece together at least one fact. That was that Nathan's father had much deeper involvement in the underground than he would've thought.

Some people mentioned things about being able to find connections between him and trafficking drugs as well as people and even children. This is not what caused his alarm though. Fairly quickly he had been contacted privately through a direct message on not just one but all of the forums questioning him about why he was looking into James.

He of course did not answer any of the questions but that was when things quickly went wrong. He noticed that through some exploit in the browser a file randomly started downloading onto his computer. Each of the forums also seemed to disappear upon refreshing. Not just the post he made but the entire forums.

This happening on the clearnet would be one thing but on the deep web it was a level of power and influence that was extremely startling. Upon realizing he quickly disconnected from the internet and ran his antivirus and spyware.

Nothing came up on either of the scans so he had spent the rest of the night completely clearing all the drives on his PC before leaving it disconnected from the internet as he went to bed. He hardly got any sleep considering how late it was when he finally slept, but if he hadn't done what he needed to he would not have been able to sleep soundly anyway.

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Hey guy's it has been quite a while since my last chapter and I apologize for that and also the fact that this chapter is only half the length of the chapters I posted in the past.

The main purpose of this chapter though is to let you all know that this story has NOT been dropped. That being said though please do not expect any stable updates when it comes to this story.

I am still working on an outline for the story and until I'm done with that I will be not be releasing any further chapters until I'm sure I am ready. Any chapters I do write in the meantime I will keep to myself as I edit and continue with the outline.

Thank you to all of you who still read this after so long and I once again deeply apologize for the lack of updates. I hope to continue with the updates in the near future until then, I say again thank you and I'm sorry.

Sincerely, TDog907