Derrick was at the mall when the call came. At that exact moment he was in a seat by the fitting room as Sarah tried out a number of different maternity outfits. With the soon to come influx of cash from Kiara's enslavement Sarah finally wanted to go out and find some good outfits to both show off her pregnancy while also looking as sexy as possible for Derrick.
Which of course was why he was stuck in the fitting room. He needed to be there to give his opinion on the various outfits Sarah had chosen. Anything he didn't like was to be immediately discarded.
To make this faster she'd wanted him in the fitting room with her, but Derrick had nixed that since they both knew that him being in there with her would lead to nothing but more sex and he didn't feel like dealing with the embarrassment if the two of them got caught.
All of that was completely forgotten after he answered his phone. Upon hearing the news he rushed into the fitting room, completely oblivious to the fact that Sarah was dressed in nothing but her bra and panties at the time and informed her of what he'd been told. She quickly got dressed and they rushed out of the store and the mall itself.
There was a brief issue at the car as stopped Derrick as he tried to get into the driver's seat. Sarah argued that in his current state it wasn't the best idea for him to be driving. Plus this way he could instantly answer any phone calls that would update him on the situation. Derrick didn't like this, but he couldn't argue against it, so he reluctantly rode shotgun instead.
Although he'd never admit it openly, deep down he knew that she was right. The entire ride to the hospital was a blur as he tried to make sense of what had happened and what it meant. All those thoughts however slipped away when he got to the hospital and was hit with his second major shock of the day. His dad had collapsed too.
When one of the nurses informed him of this Derrick simply collapsed into the seat behind him. He was already worrying about losing his grandfather and now his dad might die too. His mind just couldn't process this, resulting in him falling into a sort of fugue state. He didn't know how long he was like that before he felt the grip of a hand on his shoulder. Looking up he saw Sarah with one hand gripping him, the other, holding the hand of his mother.
Seeing her in front of him, Derrick slowly stood up and stepped forward towards her. His mother did the same as they tentatively reached for each other. As their fingers touched it was like some wall burst and the two burst forward, hugging each other desperately as the tears they'd been holding in finally broke through and they both began to bawl in each others arms as they simultaneously fell to their knees on the hospital floor, completely oblivious to anyone that might be watching.
They held themselves like that for some time before a voice interrupted them. "As much as I wish you two could stay there and comfort each other for as long as you both need, we have to talk."
Derrick knew the voice that was talking to them, so he slowly disentangled himself from his mother as they both stood up and turned to see what Karen had to say to them.
Karen looked....bad. Not that he was expecting anything different. Her eyes looked haunted and the smear marks on her makeup showed that she'd been crying just as much as they had.
"I'll need you to come with me, since this is a bad place to discuss all of this."
Derrick could guess what she meant when she said that. Giving his mother a nod, he took her by the arm as they supported each other as they followed Karen, while Sarah hovered just behind, seemingly unsure if she should offer her support or remain behind.
Karen led them down a series of hallways until they reached a room that was very familiar to Derrick, Kiara's office. Karen knocked first, and entered after hearing a response from the other side.
Inside Kiara was sitting at her desk looking through paperwork when they came in. Seeing all of them she stopped what she was doing, looking at them with surprise for a moment, before shifting to a more compassionate one. "I heard about what happened. I'm....sorry."
"I appreciate that," his mom said, "But I don't understand why Karen brought me here to see you."
"That's because I need to make sure that no one outside the people in this room either accidentally or intentionally overhear what I'm about to tell you."
As Karen told them this she gently grabbed mom and sat her down. Once there she looked at her carefully and said, "Okay we have a lot of ground to cover and we need to get through it as fast as possible, so I'm going to catch you up to where the rest of us are all at."
"First, I know about our family's gifts and I've known for years. Second, the reason we can talk about this in front of Kiara there is because I was running tests trying to understand how Derrick's powers worked and accidentally enslaved her."
Laura's eyes bulged out, first in shock, but then even further as she realized the implications of what Karen told her. "If you're telling me this, then I have to assume it's because it has something to do with what happened to my Dear."
"If that's the word you use to talk about your Master without anyone realizing what you're doing, then yes," Kiara responded.
Before Laura could answer back Kiara continued. "Before we go any further I'll start with the good news, your husband is going to live."
As soon as Kiara said that Laura seemed to melt into her chair, as though all the stress and tension she'd been holding up to that moment slipped away, leaving her completely spent as she allowed herself to begin crying again. Derrick instantly moved to his mother's side as he held her, tears of relief falling from both of them. Kiara wisely decided to wait until they'd had a moment to process this.
Ultimately though it was Karen who pulled them back to reality, gently nudging them with her hands until they looked back up at her. "As much as I would love to be a part of this, there's more we need to talk about."
"We'll have to wait to talk about your husband's recovery until later. For now just know that it looks like he had a stroke, so there's really no certainty at the moment exactly what shape he'll be in when he wakes up, or any idea if he'll ever be back to normal again."
"I don't care. All I care about is that he's alive, we'll figure the rest out later."
Kiara nodded in approval before continuing. "The other issue is your father-in-law, Jebediah. Unlike Jonathan, he died. At the moment it appears that he also had a stroke, but we won't know for sure until we've done a full autopsy."
"The reason no one's told you anything about this is because we're still not sure if anything criminal has happened. The fact that both of them collapsed at the same time of seemingly the same issue is incredibly suspicious. The only reason I can tell any of you about any of this is because at the moment no one is aware of my relationship to Master."
"But none of us did anything,"
"No, but Jebediah did," Karen interjected.
"When the EMTs started working on him they found under his jacket was a vial with some liquid in it. The liquid had leaked out through a slit in the vial and while they're still trying to find out what the liquid was, the one thing we know is that when it came in contact with his skin it left minor burns."
Laura looked confused for a moment, before her eyes narrowed in anger as she realized just what this meant. "He tried to take me from Dear," she said in a voice that seemed to approach absolute zero.
"What a minute," Derrick asked. "How did grandpa even get this? The only people who know the chemicals that were used are either in this room or one of my slaves and they wouldn't talk unless I told them to."
Karen sighed before sitting down next to them. "It's Ben. It's the only thing that makes sense."
"Ben? What are you talking about?" Derrick exclaimed.
"It's a process of elimination. There are only four people in this city who could possibly benefit from knowing how to activate your powers, you, dad, grandpa and Ben. You and dad are out because you already know and dad not only didn't want to know, he wanted no one to know. Grandpa obviously wanted this, but there's been no opportunity for him to learn it. That leaves Ben."
"So what? It's not like Ben had any more of an opportunity then gramps did."
"That's not exactly true."
After a brief pause, Karen continued. "Once I realized Ben had to be a suspect I remembered something. Shortly after I'd revealed what I knew to you, Ben paid me a visit to catch up."
"So? Seems perfectly reasonable to me."
"For you, yes. You and Ben have been close for years. But I've barely spoken to him at all outside of family events, so him trying to catch up with me is somewhat odd. Add to that the fact that I had my notebook out..."
"Wait. You kept the notebook with all the information about our families abilities out in the OPEN!" Mom exclaimed.
"It was in my apartment, not out in the open. Besides, the thing meant absolutely nothing to anyone if they didn't know what it was actually about and since at the time I didn't even suspect that Ben KNEW I was aware of our families abilities, let alone that he might have been trying to find out how to force an activation."
Derrick sat there silently as he sifted through all the information he'd just gotten in his head. Sure what Karen had said made sense, but he also knew that evidence was flimsy at best. For all that Karen was trying to look calm and collected, Derrick knew she was probably panicking inside and desperately searched for someone to blame other than herself. Besides, Derrick knew Ben. He'd never pull something like this, especially since he only had a few years before he was old enough to activate on his own.
In the end though, he knew there was only one way to prove conclusively whether Ben was involved with this or not. Taking a deep breath Derrick nodded as he rose from his seat and headed for the door.
"Where are you going?" his mother asked.
"To talk to Ben of course."
"Wait!" Karen explained.
