Manipulator (27 page)

“Hey Kate,” Nick shouted as he walked through and spotted her in the kitchen.

“Hey," she replied to him. "Do you want some coffee?”

“I’d love one thanks.”

No one broached the subject of Alex as the three of them all sat and drank their coffee whilst waiting for Eli. Half an hour passed with no sign of him turning up. An hour came and went just as fast with not so much as a word from the man.

“He’s still not answering,” Nick said as he hung up his phone for the fifth time. They’d all been trying to get in touch with him, but to no avail.

“We did cut him loose,” Kate said, sounding let down. “Maybe he’s gone on the run? He
was
in custody before because of us, right? Maybe he had a change of heart about all of this. Maybe he just lost all trust in us.”

Owen looked disappointed and let out a heartfelt sigh. He genuinely thought that Eli was willing to help him. He felt played. Eli made the exact right moves and disappeared at the first opportunity. He had left his PRoGRaM device behind

“We’ll start without him,” Owen said, his tone a little darker than usual. “We started this thing without him. And we’ll finish it without him.”

On that note, Owen glanced over at Nick. Without even speaking a word, the man knew exactly what Owen wanted. Nick grabbed his laptop and began to boot it up. “I’ve put Marcus’ and Alex’s memories of PRoGRaM headquarters in order," he said as he waited for his laptop to load. "I can play you what we have of their conversation so far,” he said as he pressed a few buttons on his keyboard. The voices of Marcus and Alex began to blast out of the mildly powered speakers on the laptop.

Marcus’ voice began, booming out as he seemed to be greeting someone. It was clearer now that he wasn’t talking to Alex at this point.

“…Ah ah ha! It’s been too long my old friend!"

"…How have you been?"

"…Of course, I never turn a drink down!”

“And me,” Alex’s voice chipped in, perfectly timed to match the conversation. “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen this place. Doesn’t seem to have changed too much!”

“So, lets get down to business," the voice of Marcus continued. "What’s going on Ethan?”
 

There was a gap of a few seconds. Nothing too long. Then the voices spoke out again. It was Alex. “Impossible,” he answered in a surprised tone.

“You can’t be serious!” Marcus said. He too, showed wonder in his voice. A few seconds passed before Marcus spoke again.

“…You continued your research?"

"…Amazing! Have you tested this as such yet?”

There was another gap in the conversation before one of the two people that they had already met took centre stage and began speaking.

“I’m sorry, I can’t turn this opportunity down,” Alex said sheepishly.

“Neither can I," Marcus spoke. "This was always going to be the next logical step. Imagine the possibilities!” he said excitedly. A huge silence followed.

Then, the entire tone of the conversation changed. It was easier to see it this time around.

“We need to call the boss,” Marcus said, followed once again by another long silence. Owen assumed that Ethan must have been on the phone to 'the boss' at this point. But not long later the voice of Marcus boomed back in, ending the silence. “Are we to implement phase two?"

". . . You heard the boss.”

Alex had the final chilling words to end the conversation. “Why Annie though? Why does it have to be her?”

And just as suddenly as it had started, it ended.
Even with this new piece of the puzzle, there still seems to be a hell of a lot missing here.
Owen thought. “It still doesn’t make sense," he said to both Kate and Nick. "We still seem to be missing a lot, even though we’re still missing Ethan’s side of the conversation.”

“And
what
is phase two?” Nick asked. “I remember hearing it when we were listening to only Marcus’ side of the conversation. But for some reason, it stands out more this time around.”

Blank looks covered all of their faces. Nick shook his head as he had absolutely no answer to his own question. Owen just shrugged his shoulders.
That's a problem for later.
He thought. Right now, he was only interested in finding out about Annie, and getting that final, third piece of the conversation so that he could connect the dots and get the answers he so desperately wanted.

“Owen. I spent the last few hours trying to fill in the gaps in this conversation,” Nick said, trying to take charge of the situation.

“And?” Owen asked, unsure of where Nick was headed with this statement.

“And it doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?” Kate chipped in before Owen could respond. She couldn’t quite grasp what Nick was getting at.

“Well, we’re all assuming that we’re only listening to a conversation here between three people. Marcus, Alex and Ethan. But it doesn’t add up.”
 

Kate stared at him, amazed by what he had said. Owen, on the other hand, didn’t change his gaze at all. There seemed to be a glimmer of truth in the words that Nick spoke.

“Okay… look,” Nick said, adjusting himself in his chair before he began to explain himself. “I know that it’s a long shot, but I think we’re missing more than one persons dialogue here.” He sighed as he broke the bad news. “I think there’s a fourth person involved…”

Deep down, Owen knew that Nick was onto something important. His theory about there being a fourth person was probably right. If there really was another piece of the puzzle to find, then the rabbit hole went deeper than he first imagined.

It was just a matter of proving it.

And just how are we going to prove it? We have zero tangible leads on who the fourth person could be. Everything from this point on, all comes down to one person.

Ethan Darkes.

“Nicks right, Kate. There are too many gaps in the conversation to assume that there’s only three people involved. It kind of makes sense.”

“So Ethan Darkes is number three,” Owen said, nodding his head gently as he spoke. “But who the hell is number four?”

“Owen,” Nick said gently, in a tone that told Owen to brace himself for what he was about to say. “What if it’s Annie?”

Chapter Fifty Six

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Unknown

A few days without complications was good news. It had been days since Owen and his team had started to crack open what was going on, and luckily they had finally hit a brick wall. For the last two days, Ethan knew for a fact that Archer was at a complete loss. He had hoped that his warnings to Owen and his team had backed them off their personal mission, because that was
exactly
what he had been trying to achieve.

Ethan sat in his large apartment, not unlike that which Owen lived in. It was dark inside, but that was because all of the blinds were closed. He didn’t want any peeping eyes looking in on him. He sat at his desk with his laptop open, connected into a secure video conference with his boss. Because of the current situation, the two of them spoke daily.
I’ll need to meet them someday.
He thought as the video call connected.
To see just who it is that I work for.
 

As always, the boss never showed their face. All that Ethan could see on the screen were audio waves which moved every time that his bosses voice came through his speakers. There was no doubt in his mind that the boss could see him though. Their robotic, modulated voice seeped through his speakers.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” the voice of the boss said to him bluntly in a dark, serious tone.
You didn’t argue back to a tone like that.
“This experiment’s over.”
 

Ethan nodded, knowing exactly what this meant. He sat thinking of a reply for a few seconds before he spoke. “Would you call phase two a success?” he asked, eager to find out his bosses opinions and validate his existence, mainly due to the fact that phase two was something he had looked after and been in control of for a long time.

“Mostly. There have been a few… complications. But everything went well. Just as planned," the modulated voice on the monitor said.

“It’s a shame about Marcus,” Ethan spoke genuinely. He and Marcus had been good friends to each other over the last few years. “He was a good man. A good programmer. A good friend.”

“He died for a cause Ethan,” the emotionless, robotic voice of the boss chipped in. “He died for the future.”

“What happens now?” Ethan asked.

“Experiments over. You know what you have to do.”

And on that note, Ethan’s boss cut the connection.

Chapter Fifty Seven

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Patterson’s Bar, New York

It’s been days. Days since we’ve heard anything from the FBI. Have they forgotten about us?
Owen wondered as he took a huge swig from the beer that was on the table. “How do we know this is even him?” he asked as he looked at an obscure photo that he held up to look at with his other hand.

“Well… we don’t,” Nick admitted, taking a small gulp of his own beer whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on their surroundings. The two of them were sat in a bar in downtown New York called Paterson’s. It wasn't a complete dive, but it was still a far cry from some of the more popular establishments that scattered New York. It was cheap and local, a place that they could wind down and talk. And that was all that really mattered to all of them.

“You called me out of the blue, down to a bar in the middle of nowhere to look at a picture of someone that just
might
be the man we’re looking for?” Owen asked, his voice a mix of sarcasm and mild annoyance, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he immediately regretted talking that way to Nick. He dropped the tone immediately, mouthing the word
'sorry'
to Nick, who seemed to forgive him instantly.

There was no point in creating tension between their team. That was the last thing that they needed. After all, Nick was really putting a hell of a lot of effort into Owen's personal mission, and was going seriously out of his way to find the final piece of the puzzle. At this point, any lead at all was
still
a lead. It was worth looking into anything that might point them in the right direction, no matter how flimsily it tied into the case. Any information at all was better than what they had managed to dig up over the last few days.
Absolutely nothing.

“Any excuse for a drink right?” Nick said as he raised his glass in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. Owen laughed properly for the first time in a long time. “It’s the closest thing to a picture of the man that I could dig up from the FBI servers without being detected,” Nick continued. “Ethan Darkes just doesn’t want to be found.”

Owen held the photo up in front of him again, studying it intently. It was a grainy image of a man with a hood up, covering his head. The photo was clearly taken from a bad angle as the man's hood obscured the entire top half of his face. Even though he looked at it as closely as possible, Owen just couldn't see the mans hair or eyes. A few facial features on the lower half of his face were noticeable, but unfortunately there was nothing unique. The only thing that they could possibly work off was a tattoo on the lower half of the man's right arm. It seemed to be some sort of tribal patterned ink.

But even so, all of this just wasn’t much to go off. Searching for this one man in a world containing billions of people was an almost impossible task, especially given the fact that Ethan didn't want to be found in the first place.

“Hey guys,” Kate said as she walked up to the table where the two of them were sitting with what looked like just a fizzy drink, but as it neared Owen he could smell the strong stench of some sort of spirit mixed in. Kate took a seat at the table between him and Nick, eager to see what they were talking about. The two of them both greeted her before Nick moved straight in and showed her the photo that he had found of the man that they suspected was the Ethan Darkes.

“This isn’t exactly much to go off,” she said uncertainly after looking at the photo for a few seconds.

“I know,” Owen answered, sounding disappointed. “But at least now we know what our next step is."

Kate was caught off guard. “And that is?”

“Well, we’ve been talking about it, and remember that theory that Eli came up with?" Owen asked. "About how Alex Morgan could have potentially been at the scene of the crash, alongside Marcus?”

“Yeah, and then you found him on the streets, watching sneakily for the crash to happen.”

“Well, me and Nick have been talking about it. And if this
is
Ethan in the photograph, then it stands a chance that he too was at the scene of the crash, right?”

“That… That actually makes sense,” Kate agreed.

“Good. We’re glad you agree, because we’ve been waiting for you to arrive. We’ll finish our drinks now and then go check out this theory. Eli could have been onto something before. And we still have his PRoGRaM machine back in my apartment. What’s the worst that can happen, right?"

“We’re leaving already?” Kate asked, genuinely surprised.
We can't leave now. We need to stay here…