A JSE Fanfic
Part Four: The Next Clues
[This is part of a small ten-part series I wrote for Halloween 2019. There's a new villain in town, and Jackieboy is on his list. Now with JJ's help, Jackie goes about solving the next set of puzzles.]
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If anyone was walking through the streets of the historic section of the city at 1:40am, they would’ve been surprised to see the two men sitting on the curb, staring intently at the blue screen of a laptop. Jackie had the computer carefully balanced on his knees, JJ leaning on his shoulder as he watched. “And add to the list of things this guy knows about me,” Jackie muttered. “My freaking email! Yaaaay.”

'That is a bit disturbing,' JJ signed, frowning. 'How could he know all this?'

“Look, as someone who’s hacked before, I can tell you that very little on the Internet is entirely secure.” Jackie opened his email, immediately noticing a message from an email address: 4d6164@gmail.com. “But still, this guy must have some crazy skills. I’m starting to think he supplemented any cyber stalking with regular stalking. You know, following us around. Maybe placing spy cameras in hidden locations.” He clicked on the email he’d received, opening it to see it was completely blank, except for an attached zip folder called “Set 2.”

'That seems a tad excessive, doesn’t it?' JJ asked, but he stopped, reconsidering. 'Well, actually, this entire idea is excessive. If he wanted to go after you, he didn’t need to invent this entire twisted game.'

“That’s true. But some people just like to fuck with others.” Jackie downloaded the zip file, then found it in the laptop’s Downloads folder and unzipped it. “What worries me is that I’ve never even heard of this guy…”

The “Set 2″ zip folder had just one file inside: 2.png. Frowning, Jackie clicked on it. What popped up was a black-and-white image of a staff, with wings sprouting from the top, two snakes twining around its length. “Oh! This, this! That’s a…uh..” Jackie bit his nails a bit, thinking.

JJ looked at him, then finger-spelled a word. 'C-A-D-U-C-E-U-S.'

“Yes! Caduceus!” Jackie shook his head. “Man, my brain is all over tonight. More than usual.” He took a deep breath. “You know what this is? It’s a medical symbol. Henrik has a sweater with a caduceus on it, Jack got him it for his birthday one year.” Guess they now knew who the second set of puzzles was for.

'Focus, Jackie,' JJ implored. 'But is this all there is? I don’t understand what this could be pointing to, other than…who’s next.'

“Well, with your puzzle I had to play around with editing an audio file.” Jackie closed the image and opened the laptop’s photo editor. “Might as well start doing the same for this picture. I mean, obviously not audio editing, but you know.”

The very first thing Jackie did when opening up the editor was click on the brightness slider and slide it all the way to the brightest setting. And words immediately appeared in the previously black area of the caduceus’s staff. Jackie leaned closer, tilting his head to the side. “ ‘Follow the skulls’…” he read out loud. His brows furrowed. “Well that means nothing.”

JJ waved his hand in front of Jackie’s face to get his attention, then signed, 'Perhaps it relates to some clues in the city around us?'

“Maybe. But I don’t have any idea what that could be referring to.” Jackie tapped his fingers against the laptop’s edge. After a moment, he started playing around with more sliders on the editing program. After turning up the contrast, something else appeared. “Whoa, hey, what are these?”

A string of figures were now wrapping around the edges of the picture. Small words in the top left corner said “Start here.”

'It must be some kind of code, right?' JJ asked. 'They’re numbers, but they go too high to be a simple alphabet substitution.'

“Yeah, but there are letters too.” Jackie began reading the string out loud. “68 74 74 70 73 3a 2f 2f…I have no idea what this is. But I guess that’s what Google is for.” He opened up the website, plugging ‘cipher decoder’ into the search bar. An overwhelming amount of results popped up. He blinked. “I…I don’t even know where to start.”

'Trial and error?' JJ suggested.

Jackie’s face fell, a gray cloud falling over his expression. His eyes darted to the small clock in the corner of the laptop.

'Perhaps there is one that could identify the cipher when you type it in?' JJ suggested. 'But other than that, we don’t really have much of an option.'

“…you’re right. You’re right.” Jackie took a deep breath. And another. “Okay, let’s start.”

It took five minutes to find a decoder that gave them something recognizable after plugging in the code from the picture. It turned out to be a url for a YouTube video, which Jackie immediately typed into a new tab.

“Oh! Uh, there’s earbuds.” Jackie handed one of the buds to JJ. “We can listen together. I know we could just take out the earbuds and listen with the laptop speakers, but just in case…” Just in case of what? He wasn’t sure. But JJ took the earbud anyway, awkwardly putting it in.

Jackie didn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t…this. He physically leaned backwards at the sound of the intro: “Yo, what’s up guys? I’m Chase, and welcome to Bro Average!” He had to pause it for a moment, just to bask in the confusion. “I-I thought…” he said slowly. “Was…was I wrong about who…?”

JJ looked confused as well. 'Perhaps it’s both of them?'

“But there are four sets? I-I don’t…?” Jackie shook his head. “Nevermind, it’ll make sense later, once we actually get to them. Because we’re going to. In time.” Jackie laughed. JJ gave him a concerned look that he waved away. “I-I’m fine, let’s just…see if there are any clues here.“ He pressed play.

It looked like any other video by Chase. In fact, Jackie thought he’d seen it before. It followed the same format at first. The music, the shots of Chase hanging out, the attempts at trickshots that always failed at first. Chase once said he liked to include the fails so the viewers would know he’s no better at these than anyone else, and that anyone could do the tricks if they tried. But then—

'What was that?' JJ signed quickly.

“I don’t know.” Jackie paused the video. He used the arrow keys to go back, but when that failed to pick anything up, he resorted to using the comma and period keys on the keyboard to go frame by frame. Until he finally managed to capture the image that had popped up for a split second: A hollow red circle, divided into fourths, with a red skull in the center. There were also a few strange dots and dashes along the bottom.

'Am I correct in assuming Chase didn’t originally have those in his video?' JJ asked. 'But then, how did that get there? Is it possible to put images in a video on the web?'

“No, but…” Jackie tapped the screen. “This is on a different channel.” Indeed, instead of Chase’s BroAverage channel at the bottom of the video, the channel name was a string of numbers with a few letters that looked similar to the encoded url that had been hidden in the .png of the caduceus. “That means the video could’ve been downloaded, then edited and reuploaded. There could be more of these…actually, there probably are. The image said ‘follow the skulls,’ I bet it meant ones in here.” He frowned. “What are these dashes? Morse code?”

JJ nodded in agreement.

“Well, great, guess we’re going to have to write these down and find another decoder—”

'Jackie.' JJ raised an eyebrow. 'I know Morse code.'

“You do?” Jackie blinked. “I didn’t know that. Since when?”

'Since…' JJ paused. '1923, I believe.'

“Oh. Okay. Well, that saves us some time. Here, I’ll just open up Notepad and write down the code on this image, then we can see if there are more images sneaked into the video.”

There were. Five more times, the image of the red skull appeared, each time accompanied by more Morse code. Jackie copied the code into a page on Notepad, and once he was sure there was nothing else hidden in the video, he passed the laptop to JJ. JJ glared at the code, then slowly began the process of translating. Jackie looked around the dark city while he worked, legs bouncing. The city was always empty at night, but it seemed even quieter than normal. He didn’t like it.

What if the gamemaster was somewhere in the darkness right now? He said he’d be watching. How? What if he was following them? Or were there cameras, invisible eyes, dangling in the shadows? Making sure they didn’t break the rules and get help? What time was it? How much was left? Though he didn’t want to, Jackie began wondering what would happen if he failed. He knew the basics, of course, he’d never see the others again. But what would happen to them? Would it end with something as simple as a gunshot? Or would it last longer? Maybe they wouldn’t be killed at all, maybe they’d vanish into a worse fate—

JJ tapped Jackie’s arm, and Jackie yelped. JJ sharply withdrew his hand, then asked, 'Are you alright?'

“Y-yeah, I-I just was, um…thinking. You startled me. Are you done?”

JJ clearly didn’t think Jackie was actually alright, but he nodded. 'I’ve finished. I believe it’s an address.'

“Here, lemme see.” Jackie scooted closer. It was indeed a simple address. “Spiralnest Street…that’s in the north part of the city. It…it’s dangerous there.”

'Well, we don’t have much of a choice, do we?' JJ signed, sighing.

“No. No, we don’t. We’re going to have to be quick, and hope we don’t attract any attention.” Jackie closed his eyes, preparing himself, then opened them again. “We can’t take public transportation, nothing runs this late at night. Neither of us can drive, and even if we could, we don’t have a car. How fast can you run?”

JJ bit his lip. 'Not as fast as I would like.'

Jackie looked at the time on the laptop. He watched the numbers change from 1:56 to 1:57. His stomach twisted sharply. “Okay. Okay. We have time. We’ll be quick.” He shut the laptop, putting it back in the box. “Let’s go.”

He stood up, and JJ did as well. He grabbed his hand and the two of them started running.

And somewhere else in the city, a man sitting at a desk leaned back in his chair, staring at a screen on a bank of monitors. Three hours left. They were still ahead of schedule, but now only slightly.

He reached over and switched cameras, checking first on a room with two people behind a sheet of plexiglass, then another with a single man lying unconscious on the floor. Good. Nothing had changed.

He stood up. By his calculations, it would take them anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half to reach their destination. Enough time to drive over there and set up the final puzzle of Set 2. He chuckled.

He couldn’t wait for this part. It was a classic, one of his favorites. Though he had a feeling Jackieboy and his friends wouldn’t appreciate it as much.