Chapter 3: Next Stop: Japan

Lin Jie woke up around 6am and got ready in the small bathroom connected to her room. She made her way out expecting to see Jin anywhere, but Jin had already left in the middle of the night with a promise to explain everything when she needed it. All the note said was “Wait for the right time. I will be there.”

Throughout her two month in LA, Lin Jie searched through all of the files she had access to in Udea’s database up to that date to find something that would help her in this case. There were hundreds of leads stuck in America. Most of them were in someplace in California, but none of them bore fruit.

Lin Jie fell onto the couch in her apartment and pulled out the proper container. She set up and only said a few sentences. “Report number 19. I have followed a lead to San Francisco, but this one turned out to be an enthusiast in Chinatown. Nothing new. I will go onto the next one tomorrow.” She closed the recording equipment and looked out the window to the dark LA streets.

It’s been over two months since Lin Jie last saw Jin. He had stayed with her for a few weeks. He never fully left until two weeks after he left the note.

Jin would just pop in at random times and check on what was happening in Lin Jie’s search. He would just pop in from the guest bedroom window and wait for her to finish any recording if he walked in on one. It did happen once. She threw a bag at him to make him shut up saying it was a bug. But one day, something felt off about Jin. Where he was bubbly and checking everything out one day, he would be fidgeting on the couch the entire stay not saying a word the next. This continued for the last week in March. The next day, he was gone for good. A few months passed with faulty leads until one day, she stumbled upon an article from Japan a day before America’s, and that’s where we are now.

2010, June 9th.

Japan experiences mass chaos in Shinjuku at the finding of a man with a new symbol never seen before. Scientists and historians try to find the symbol with no luck. Who is this mystery man?

Lin Jie kept looking at the pixelated face trying to see it clearly. The body looked familiar. That’s when she saw the four red stripes on the right bicep. Everything started to spin. Lin Jie threw the capsule to the ground as the image disappeared. The last lead she followed ended in a dead end and now the man that was supposed to tell her everything could potentially be gone. ‘You better not be dead Thornton. Please don’t be dead.’ Repeated in her head as Lin Jie rapidly packed everything. Booking a flight to Japan was not hard, so she left for the airport the next day.

Sitting in the rental car area, Lin Jie did her last report in LA. “Report number 20. Today is 2010 June 8th. I am on my way to Japan to follow a lead in the newspaper. Will report back soon.” She stopped the recording and pulled into the proper rental car drop off and put everything back into the capsule. Getting her luggage, Lin Jie made a rush to the gate that held the plane to NRT.

‘Jin, please let that not be you. You left me with questions that need to be answered now.’

“Calling section 3 for flight 221 to Narita Airport!” Lin Jie got her belongings, and with a newfound determination, she headed to Japan.

Landing in Japan almost 18 hours later, Lin Jie found herself in the hustle and bustle of Narita Airport. Jet lag was not being a friend to her, either. Taking one last look at the article in her hands, she quickly made her way to the taxi stand. She got in and gave him an address in Shinjuku, which turned out to be a ramen shop. Thank god.

She walked in and the old man operating the restaurant smiled at her. “Welcome to Ito Ramen. How can I help you?”

“I’ll take the shio ramen, please.”

“Coming right up.” Lin Jie ate the food and quickly made her way through the streets finding the blocked off area of a crime scene in Shinjuku.

“Night time.” Lin Jie said under her breath as she left for the train station to go to the safe house in Shibuya. In front of the apartment complex, there were bikes labeled with the apartment you were staying in and hers was #3. Night soon fell as Lin Jie took to doing some sightseeing before the country would “go to sleep” at some curfew aka, when the trains would have their last run through for the day. 11pm came around as Lin Jie got on the bike, silently riding through the streets. It would take her a while to get back to Shinjuku, so by the time she got there, all trains would have already stopped.

She put the bike in a secluded area away from the trained men handing out cards for their host clubs and away from the nightlife. Just because the trains are done does not mean the people are. Walking through the streets, she finally came to the yellow caution tape in the suburban area. No one was around the area, so she quickly went under and put on some latex gloves from her own first aid kit.

“Okay, tell me something.” Lin Jie walked into the house they found the body in hoping for something that was left behind that could say who it was. The face was blurred out and proclaimed as a John Doe. The floorboards creaked with her weight making everything seem more eerie and creepy. The sounds from outside seemed to weaken with each step further into the abandoned house.

“One or two hints. That’s all I a-“ Lin Jie screamed as a board broke from her weight. She quickly jumped out of the small hole seeing two or three floor boards in the basement.

After the floor seemed to settle down, Lin Jie peered over the hole and looked down to see it. Nothing. Pulling out a flashlight on her phone, the room looked to be recently used.

“Basement.” Lin Jie sighed. “Well, if this isn’t every horror movie.” She pocketed her phone and pulled out another capsule. This one had a blue seat on the lid and she popped it open and an assortment of random objects laid in front of her. Looking outside, she knew there was no way to get into the room from inside the house. ‘It was probably a bunker of sorts from the World War and sealed off after it.’ Lin Jie looked everywhere in the house and there was no way to get inside even from inside the room.

“Okay, rope and a hammer.” Lin Jie packed the rest and tied one end of the rope to the porch pillar outside, letting the other end go down to the basement. Getting a small pair of scissors hooked up next to the pillar, Lin Jie stood next to the hole. “Well, let’s hope for no one behind me and the whole horror trope.” Gliding down the rope, Lin Jie found herself in what should have been a nuclear bunker converted into a live-able space for anytime of the year.

There were various things under her making the floor uneven. “This has got some serious Parasite vibes in it. Well, except for the crazy guy.” Shining her flashlight through the small area, she found a small, twin size futon, stocks of canned vegetables, lots of rice, and jugs of water laying on the other side of the bed. Looking above, a wooden panel that was a different color from the rest of the ceiling was on the far side of the room. Lin Jie walked to stand right under it. After some tweaking, she got the door open. Pushing herself through, she stared at the gate right outside the house. Fake grass and dirt was everywhere. “Trap door.”

Placing the door back in place, Lin Jie headed back into the dark room right under the broken panels, looking for a light switch or bulb. Well, she found it by running directly into the lightbulb in the corner just hanging from the ceiling.

“Shit. Well, where the hell is the switch?” Finding a lone wire was not the best situation. With a metal ring at the end, she connected it with the rim of the bulb and illuminated the whole room. With a better view, Lin Jie gazed at the cork board on the wall above the desk filled with photoshopped pictures since it’s 2010, and lines connecting everything to one big thing in the middle. “Lynchpin. It is him. It has to be.” Lin Jie took a picture of the cork board analyzing everything on the board.

“Stock drops, Titanic, World War 1, World War 2, Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, IBM 5100, Cuba, JFK’s death, moon landing race, Vietnam War, Korean War, 2000 Armageddon, John Teeter, Twin Towers, Crash of ’08, Bin Laden’s death, COVID, sparks racism, police brutality, election, BLM, cure made too late, Dec. 20, 2020, population down, Udea project created in 2020 by Dr. Mike Frei, 2021-2025: Pod Experiments.” Lin Jie read all of the headlines. “Bring 100 people in for testing. First class, 20 people(2021), status: failed. Second class, 20(2022), status: failed. Third class, 20(2023), status: failed. Fourth class, 20(2024), status: failed. Fifth class, 20(2025), status: unknown.” Lin Jie stopped there in shock trying to process what she just read. “There were more tests? But, we were the. . .first. . .class.” Looking at the board again, there was something covered by Udea’s news article and enamel pin attached to it. Lifting it, it read ‘2025: Fall of Udea, creation of Edin’ with a different enamel pin under it. Udea’s pin looked like an intricate snowflake. It was supposed to symbolize new beginnings. After this test succeeded, the world would be reborn. Edin’s pin looked more like a flower with an eye in it. Compared to Udea’s light blue, yellow, and purple colors, Edin’s had a light and dark red combo making it look. . .wrong.

Lin Jie stared at the cork board trying to grasp the situation when something white caught her eye. It was a very thick letter. Picking it up, she read it immediately.

“Dear Ms. Liu,

By now you have tracked me down to Japan. I’m sorry, but if you’re reading this then that means I’m either dead or can’t talk to you. You thankfully found my base and the cork board. Yes, there were more than just you and the other nineteen. Those other groups were really testers for the real beta class. If you had friends in the other groups, you will never find them. Not even the system has their file. Their files have been long since forgotten or destroyed. You were told that the others were sent back home. Your families don’t know the truth. Udea got rid of their families the moment they were deemed unable to continue. They got lost. You were the last twenty.

The Lynchpin was your group’s mission. This was the main mission. I know these things because I’m not part of Udea. Look up at the board if you haven’t yet because I am a part of a company that took up that project, but they left us for dead. My real name is Jin, but I’m not John Ti//tor or the man who is responsible for him.

You can’t change what has already happened and that’s why our group strayed from our missions. We were tasked the same as you, but we knew they were in the wrong. We needed to make sure that these things happened but in a different way. I was tasked to find John Titor, but he does not exist. That was our job. We were tasked to find someone to make the spark happen to bring us closer to 2019, this is what we deemed our mission. They wanted us to destroy any of this to make a better world. Don’t let it happen.

This is what I meant to tell you all of those months ago. If you can’t find my symbol, then that means I am dead. Did I look good in the papers? Haha, sorry, dark humor is needed when you’re writing a letter for someone to find when you’re dead. Just promise me that you will remember what I have said here. Goodbye, Lin Jie.”