The Sunflower Society: Secrets Beyond the Sky
A Deceptive Encounter
Chapter 1
In the scenic town of Seabrook Harbor, a hidden society is shrouded in secrecy. Known only to a select few, the Sunflower Society’s mission is carried out by five intrepid guardians who called themselves the Qubies.
They meet every Saturday morning at 7 o’clock to debrief and plan. Their hideout is in the rear of the town’s historical library, concealed behind an unmarked door draped with poison ivy vines.
The library, with its eloquent arches and decorative shiny golden dome above a copper roof, is a favorite tourist attraction.
Disguised as freshmen attending the local university, the Qubies are, in fact, from outer space. Only one of them is from Earth and an actual teenager.
Despite dressing like typical college students, each Qubie has a unique, memorable persona.
Ivie, the smart, tech-savvy, intuitive leader, radiates with an aura of authority. Her big, brown eyes seem wise beyond her years. Her presence is both calming and commanding.
With ethereal beauty, Luna’s pale blue eyes seem to hold the universe’s secrets, and her silver hair shimmers like moonlike when she walks.
Hana embodies the essence of a skilled detective with her sharp wits, amber eyes, and unwavering confidence.
The group’s warrior, Harper, has intense green eyes, strawberry-blonde hair that matches her freckles, and an athletic build that conveys strength.
Sophia, the adventurous one, has wavy auburn hair that cascades down her back like a glistening waterfall. Her sincere, warm, hazel eyes and captivating smile exude trustworthiness.
One sunny Sunday afternoon, Ivie called an urgent meeting. The library’s stylish, minimalist back room was filled with the sweet scent of cotton candy as Sophia, Luna, Hana, and Harper gathered around a crystal sunflower-shaped table with matching stools.
“Qubies,” Ivie began, her voice gentle but insistent. “We’ve got a mystery to solve. An ancient cryptic journal containing top-secret accounts of alien life on this planet has gone missing!”
The room buzzed with intrigue. Always ready for a challenge, Harper exclaimed, “Well, let’s get it back!”
“If that journal gets in the wrong hands, it means disaster,” said Luna.
“Our mission in this galaxy will be compromised. What about — ” said Hana.
“What about the mission we’re already dealing with?” asked Sophia, her brows furrowed in concern.
“You’re right,” Ivie said, nodding thoughtfully. “A lot of strange stuff is happening in the Ice Desert Region. Sophia, Luna, you can go now. Keep me updated on your progress.”
Without another word, the Qubies got up from the table and zoomed through the back wall with a large bay window.
“Use the door. This is Earth!” Ivie yelled after them.
Luna peeped her head back through the wall like a guilty child. “Sorry. I will… next time.” Then she vanished.
Hana, ever the expert sleuth, proposed a plan. Ivie, with her usual leadership flair, agreed and assigned roles. Hana would search for clues. Ivie would interview suspects, and Harper would handle any physical obstacles.
The three Qubies soon arrived at Fallin Stars Observatory — a global private corporation owned by billionaire Aedan Rush.
A stern-faced security guard escorted them to Dr. Park’s office, where they found the crime scene.
“Thanks for coming, Qu — ”
“I’m Hana. This’s Harper, and that’s our leader, Ivie,” Hana interrupted him, her voice firm yet polite.
“You girls look much younger than I imagined. Are you really the Qubies?”
“How can we help?” Ivie asked.
“I’m Dr. Park. That’s Ms. Keyes, my administrative assistant. She found this mess. As you can see,” he turned and pointed to a gaping hole in the wall adjacent to his desk. Beneath the hole, a banged-up metal safe lay wide open on the carpeted floor.
“I must get that journal back.” Dr. Park continued, “If Mr. Rush discovers it’s gone, I’m fired. We’re all fired!” He glanced around at Ms. Keyes and three security guards standing silently near the open door.
Dr. Park adjusted his rimless bifocal eyeglasses nervously. Though the room was comfortably cool, he was perspiring. Perspiration stains marred the underarms of his crisp white shirt, and his black tweed slacks were wrinkled. He looked almost as disheveled as his office.
The faint scent of sweat and fear lingered in the air, mingling with the metallic traces of a chemical fire. The once-organized office felt violated and looked overly chaotic.
Hana skimmed the entire ransacked space with a palm-sized laser scanner. She scanned the papers scattered across the floor. The scanner beam glided through overturned office chairs and broken picture frames, through desk drawers pulled out and emptied of their contents, leaving behind a mess of pens, paper clips, and personal items. Nothing unusual showed up in the scans — not even a fingerprint.
Then Hana scanned the hole in the wall and the safe. She detected a faint electromagnetic trail leading outside. She followed the trail out of the building into Seabrook Harbor’s bright, colorful, quaint streets filled with the aroma of blooming magnolia trees.
Meanwhile, Ivie, equipped with a quarter-sized electronic speech-to-text device in her pink blouse’s pocket, began questioning the three security guards on duty. She intentionally waited to question Dr. Park’s administrative assistant, Ms. Keyes. She wanted time to observe her demeanor since she was the first to discover that the journal was missing.
The security guards’ responses to Ivie’s questions seemed plausible, so she dismissed them to continue their duties.
“Dr. Park, who has access to that vault?” Ivie asked, her eyes sharp and curious.
“Only Mr. Rush and me,” Dr. Park replied, his hands trembling slightly.
“And where is Mr. Rush now?” Ivie pressed.
“He’s abroad, conducting business in Europe. He’s unaware of the theft,” Dr. Park answered, visibly relieved that his employer was still in the dark.
“Ms. Keyes, do you have access to the vault?” Ivie asked.
“No.” Ms. Keyes said with a voice that was barely a whisper.
Forcing eye contact with Ms. Keyes, Ivie asked, “Do you always work on a Sunday?”
“No. I misplaced my cell phone, again. Thought I might’ve left it here. Then I saw Dr. Park’s office door wide open. That’s when I saw this. I called Dr. Park from the office phone.”
“I came right away,” Dr. Park said.
“And I called the sheriff’s office — ”
“What? You did what, Ms. Keyes?”
Dr. Park asked as if surprised that Ms. Keyes reported the crime to the proper authorities.
At that moment, an attractive, charismatic young man with keen instincts and a charming smile tapped on the office door frame. His strikingly handsome features and self-assured attitude drew the attention of everyone as he walked into the room.
Flashing his badge, he said, “I’m Detective Mason McAllister, and this is Officer Keats.”
A tall, sandy-haired young man stepped from behind the detective.
Dr. Park’s eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t authorize this detective. McAllister, is it? This is a private matter within our company.”
“So, you don’t need our help?” Detective McAllister asked.
“That’s right. Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“Let’s go, Officer Keats. No need to waste the taxpayers’ money.”
Ivie caught Detective McAllister’s gaze, and a spark of interest flickered in his eyes. He stared at her for seconds longer than necessary before turning to leave.
Outside, Hana meticulously followed the ultraviolet trail, her mind racing with possibilities. The trail led her to a secluded alleyway, where it abruptly ended. She surveyed the area, taking note of the faint signal from a high-tech drone that had recently passed through.
Sensing Hana’s need for backup, Harper joined her in the alley. “What did you find?”
“Someone used a drone to transport the journal from the observatory’s vicinity. We need to track its signal,” Hana replied, her eyes gleaming with determination.
Back at the observatory, Ivie finished her interviews. She then met up with Hana and Harper. They tracked the drone’s signal to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town.
The trio moved swiftly. Their senses heightened, anticipating confrontation inside the dimly lit warehouse. Ivie took a pair of spy sunglasses from her jeans pocket and put them on.
The Qubies examined the abandoned warehouse, which was brimming with alien technology. They found the ancient cryptic journal, a gun, a dagger, and other weapons on a steel table in a small back room on the top floor.
A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness as they approached the journal on the steel table. It was Dr. Park, but something in his demeanor had changed.
“I’ve been expecting you, Qubies,” he said, his voice laced with an unsettling stillness.
Ivie stepped forward, her gaze focused and unwavering. “Dr. Park, why did you take the journal?”
Dr. Park shook his head from left to right. “That journal’s a fake. A carrot to dangle in front of the scientists at Fallin Stars Observatory. That scoundrel Rush keeps the real one hidden from everyone — even me. I’m the one who built Fallin Stars Observatory from the ground up. I made Rush a multibillionaire. And now… Now, he treats me like the help!”
Ivie took a step closer, her eyes narrowing. “Dr. Park, why?”
“Why?” Dr. Park replied, a chilling smile stretching the corners of his lips almost to his ears. Then he laughed out loud — an eerie, unhinged laugh. “You see, I’ve suspected for a long time that you Qubies are not who you appear to be.”
Dr. Park threw a golf-ball-sized gelatinized sphere at them. It exploded into blinding white light, covering their clothing in an iridescent dry slime that jelled into an invisible force field.
“Dr. Park, stop this!” Ivie shouted, struggling against the force field that made her clothes feel like an immovable iron suit. “We’re here to protect, not harm!”
“Protect?” Dr. Park scoffed. “You’re deceiving everyone. But wait. Billionaires can know about your existence, but not the rest of us?”
Harper tried to use her strength to break free, but the force field was too strong. “Dr. Park, this isn’t the way — .”
“That punk Rush told me to contact the Qubies in an emergency if he couldn’t be reached. Can you believe that? He wanted me — Dr. Park — the President of a trillion-dollar company to personally contact an amateur sleuth agency run by five college kids. Five Girls! That bothered me, and my Ivy League Ph.D.”
He flung several of the Cubie’s business cards on the floor. “An AMATEUR SLEUTHING AGENCY! Clever idea for a cover. ALIENS!”
He winked at the motionless Qubies and gave them a thumbs-up before continuing. “That is until I started spying on you kids. How could you, he pointed at Hana, be in St. Augustine one minute, then fifteen minutes later, you show up in Paris? Impossible! For humans, that is.”
Ivie attempted to use telepathy to access her communication device, but the force field interfered with all their technology. “Dr. Park, listen to me. Exposing us is dangerous.”
Dr. Park hesitated momentarily. A flicker of doubt raced across his face.
Ivie tried to take a deep breath but failed. Without grimacing from the pain in her lungs, she asked, “Can you imagine the chaos if people knew aliens existed on Earth?”
“I want the real journal,” Dr. Park said, his voice quivering excitedly. “You Qubies are going to get the real journal for me.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Ivie said.
Harper added. “We’ll find the real journal only to keep it safe from creeps like you.”
Dr. Park picked up a gun from the table and fired several shots. Instead of bullets coming out, three sparking multicolored bullet-shaped bubbles discharged.
“Once these bubbles touch your skin, you gals will do whatever I say.”
The power went out. The room was completely engulfed in darkness.
Ivy watched as Detective McAllister tackled Dr. Park. They both tumbled to the floor.
Hana silently screamed at a perfect pitch, shattering the slime-like substance that encased them. She had been silently screaming the whole time, trying to mimic the critical breaking point frequency of the substance.
Harper plucked a strand of hair from her head and rubbed it between her fingers to build up an electrical charge. Then she speared like an arrow into the multicolored bullet-shaped bubbles racing toward them. The bubbles evaporated upon contact with her hair.
“You’re under arrest,” Detective McAllister said, putting handcuffs on Dr. Park. He snatched him to his feet as the lights came back on. This time, the warehouse lighting was much brighter.
“Idiot, you have no right to arrest me.”
“Save it for the judge,” replied Detective McAllister. Looking over at Officer Keats, he added, “Get a team out here to inventory this merchandise. Find out who owns this warehouse.”
“Right away, boss,” Officer Keats replied.
“My lawyers will have me out within the hour. Do you know who I am? I play pickleball with Judge Bennet and Judge Hightower,” Dr. Park’s expression danced between distress and rage.
“Thanks for sharing,” Detective McAllister said sarcastically as he shoved Dr. Park into Officer Keats's waiting hands.
“Don’t touch me,” Dr. Park sneered at Officer Keats. Then he looked over at the Qubies. “This isn’t over, amateur sleuths.”
Officer Keats grabbed Dr. Park by the arm and dragged him from the room.
Detective McAllister approached Ivie, a soft smile on his lips. “I’m gonna need you three to follow me to the station to give a statement.”
Ivie felt a blush rise to her cheeks but managed to stay poised. “Okay.”
With the crisis averted, the Qubies secretly threw crystal sprinkles into the air as they left the warehouse.
Ivy took a glance back. She saw that the ancient cryptic journal was missing from the table.
Did Detective McAllister take it, she wondered.
Several minutes later, the warehouse disintegrated into a pile of silver dust, ensuring the alien technology was destroyed.
As Harper drove her fancy muscle car towards the station, the sun was setting over Seabrook Harbor.
Ivie looked out the window at the sky, a masterpiece of hues: yellow, orange, pink, and purple blended seamlessly together. Wispy clouds caught the last rays of sunlight, glowing like snow fluff just before dark. The salty breeze off the Atlantic Ocean was crisp and fresh.
Ivie felt grateful that the missing journal mystery had been solved quickly, but something still didn’t feel right about it.
Then, without warning, a feeling of uneasiness washed over her as the scent of lavender rushed in like a tsunami. The word “danger” hovered before her face in bold neon lime green letters, blocking the beautiful ocean view.
“We’re in danger,” Ivie said.
“I sense it, too,” Hana added.
“What the f — k?” Harper slammed on the brakes — rear-ending Detective McAllister’s vehicle. All the traffic lights had instantly turned green as they approached a busy four-way intersection.
They watched in horror as the sheriff’s deputy car carrying Officer Keats and Dr. Park went flying through the air from the impact of a speeding eighteen-wheeler, only to be hit by an SUV as it landed, followed by a pickup truck and several other cars. The pile-up was massive.
Detective McAllister stumbled out of his vehicle and managed to run towards the pileup, only to be knocked to his knees as the sheriff’s deputy car burst into flames.
Qubies, it’s not over, Ivie thought. It’s just beginning.
