Manipulator (33 page)

Wait… you bugged Owen's apartment, remember?

Eli had completely forgotten about the audio bugs that he had placed inside Owen's apartment. He did it the first day that he was there, back when he, Nick, Kate and Owen were talking about the PRoGRaM Prison System, and about Alex Morgan.

Just listen in!
He said to himself.
Keep an ear on things unfolding there. Let Kate work with them, she might slip up and lead them to where they need to go. To whoever's in control. Then you can jump back on the bandwagon.

That settles it. I'll lay low for a while.

And that was exactly what he did. For two days, Eli stayed under the radar and out of the way. He was dead to the world, or at least, that was what he wanted the world to believe. For two straight days, he listened in on Owen's apartment, admittedly with some difficulty.
I put three bugs in there, and they're all picking up interference? Something's not right…

Hour upon hour passed without anything of interest happening. Then, on the evening of December 13
^th
, two days later, Eli finally picked up something of use as he listened in to Owen's voice.

“… I don't know.”

“… I think he might have been trying to steal the PRoGRaM device.”

“… Holy. Shit.”

"… It’s Ethan!"

Ethan!
He was the last piece of Owen's puzzle. If there was anyone who could lead him back to whoever's in control, then it was Ethan Darkes.

Time to make a move.

Chapter Sixty Eight

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: PRoGRaM (CORRUPTION DETECTED)

Nothing but darkness lay on the other side of the glass as their train picked up speed and fired deeper into the New York City underground network. So here they were, trapped on a train in the final carriage underneath a collapsing city. Owen cared little for this environment. All he wanted was a way out of PRoGRaM. A way back to the real world.

"We're stuck in here then…" Owen said as he sat down on one side of the subway train. He lay his assault rifle across his lap as Ethan followed suit and sat opposite him. "Back on the waiting platform," he continued, resting his elbows on his knees and looking up at Ethan. "How did you know those avatars would get distracted like that? By something as simple as a bit of noise?"

"I programmed them," Ethan replied, offering only a vague answer in response.

"Was that your contribution to PRoGRaM?" Owen asked. "You programmed the avatars?"

"It wasn't just the avatars. It was everything inside the world. Marcus created the map, Alex created the technology, and I created the artificial intelligence. Everything from weather patterns to traffic. From avatars to vehicles. I'm the reason that everything feels so alive inside the world of PRoGRaM."

"Which is why you knew…"

"Which is why I knew how those avatars would react," Ethan confirmed with a nod. "Because I was the one that programmed them."

The subway train rumbled beneath them as the two men sat in silence.
So that was what Alex did for PRoGRaM. But why was he so unresponsive in the Prison System? What happened to him in the two weeks between then and now? That's a question for another day. Marcus was at the scene of Annie's death, Alex was at the scene of Annie's death, so Ethan…

"Where were you?" Owen asked, breaking the silence. "On the night of the crash. Where were you?"

"Owen," Ethan replied. "It's not the best time right now."

"Alex Morgan was there, watching and waiting for it to happen. Marcus Ortega too, he was there, executing someone at the side of the road, presumably to distract us."

"Ha!" Ethan shouted at Owen manically, but didn't laugh.

"What's so funny?" Archer replied. "Who did he kill to attract our attention?"

"It's irrelevant now," Ethan said, letting out a sigh.

"So, where were you?" Owen asked, determined to at least
some
answers before PRoGRaM got to him, but Ethan didn't answer.

It's as if he doesn't want to tell me where…

And then it clicked.

"You were driving the van," Owen said as he and Ethan locked eyes. "You were driving the van that killed her."

Without remorse, without breaking eye contact, and without saying a single world, Ethan confirmed it with just a slight nod.

How am I supposed to feel now? I thought about this day for the last few weeks. About what I could do when faced with the bastard that had run Annie down. I promised myself I'd kill him, regardless of what Annie would or wouldn't have wanted me to do.

Owen looked down, eyeing up the assault rifle that was resting on his lap.

But if I kill him, then my answers are gone. So it's up to you, Owen. What's more important? Revenge, or the truth? Actually. Wait it out. Then you can have both.

"I…" Ethan began saying before the train jolted slightly, cutting him off. The carriage shook, throwing both Owen and Ethan around in their seats slightly.
What was that?
Owen thought to himself. He didn't want to talk this one through with Ethan. He couldn't even look at the man right now.
Something's not right.

Suddenly, there was another jolt through the train, but this one was far more violent. It shook the entire carriage without remorse, throwing Ethan out of his seat and onto the floor of the train. Owen grabbed a pole nearby in an attempt to keep himself stable and upright.

Another shudder.

Another jolt.

The train continuously shook, remorselessly vibrating and throwing everything around inside that wasn't tied down, including Owen and Ethan. There was a screeching noise.
A sound like metal on metal.
Archer observed, thinking quickly back to Annie's death before snapping himself out of it.
Now is not the time to get distracted.

The screeching noise got louder
Something bad is coming. Something bad is going to…

But that was where Owen stopped thinking, because that was when the train stopped throwing everything around. That was when light began to seep in once again through the windows.

And that was when weightlessness took over.

The track had ended.

The train had fired off the edge of what could only have been a cliff, and was falling endlessly downwards with Owen and Ethan inside. But they didn't fall forever. They fell until they hit the water, thousands and thousands of feet below them.

Chapter Sixty Nine

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Owen’s Apartment, New York

“Eli?!” Nick shouted at him, shocked to his core. “You scared the shit out of me, you dumb fuck!” He breathed heavily, half tempted to laugh. Here he was, expecting death, but instead he had someone completely unexpected turn up to save him. “Where the hell have you been?” he asked, not understand why Eli had waited until now to show up again.

“Dead,” Eli responded in a deadly serious tone as he watched Nick rub his wrists where the handcuffs had been.

“Tell me later,” Nick said to him, shaking off his vague answer. “I need to help Owen right now!” he continued to say as he turned away from Eli.

“What’s happening?” Eli asked, watching intently as Nick typed furiously away onto his keyboard.

“Serious problems," Nick responded without even looking towards Eli. "There’s a virus inside the PRoGRaM’s base code. It’s changing the world, trying to kill Owen and Ethan.”

“Is the virus blocking you from pulling them out?” Eli asked, trying to understand where Nick was at with his work on the rogue code. He looked around for a chair to pull up.

“Yeah,” Nick replied.

“Shit. You think you can get rid of-“

The two of them turned around quickly to a noise coming from the entrance to Owen’s apartment. There was a quick, loud thud, followed by nothing but silence. Eli pulled a gun from the inside of his leather jacket. "Have this," he said to Nick as he attempted to pass him the gun.

“Where did you get a gun from?!” Nick asked out of sheer surprise at seeing Eli with a weapon. Eli held it by the barrel and stretched his arm out to pass Nick the weapon, whilst constantly keeping his eyes trained on where the noise had come from.

"This was Kate's gun," he explained in a rush. "Quickly, take it. Just in case."

Nick reluctantly reached out and grabbed the weapon from Eli. He hadn't handled a gun in years. Not since basic training. But if push came to shove, he knew exactly how to use it.
Not that I really want to.
He thought as he cocked the weapon, putting a bullet in the chamber.

Eli turned to him and gave him a stern look, pulling a single finger up to his lips, instructing Nick to keep quiet. Carefully, he pulled a second weapon, presumably his own, from the back of his waistband. Eli, ready with his own gun in hand wandered off to see what the noise was, leaving Nick at the computer.

But Nick wasn't even paying attention. He'd just put the gun down on the desk in front of him. He had too many ideas running through his head. He desperately needed to get Owen out of PRoGRaM. Otherwise, everything they'd worked towards lately had been for nothing.

“Don’t worry Owen,” Nick muttered under his breath as he typed at his keyboard faster than he’d ever typed before. “I’ve got your back. I’ll get you out of there in one piece.”

Suddenly, he had an idea.
Why didn't I think of this sooner?

Nick quickly reached down into a bag underneath the desk he was working at and grabbed a small piece of hardware out of it. Untangling the wires as best he could, he quickly fumbled with it and attached into the laptop.

There were footsteps behind him.

Nick reacted quickly, grabbing the gun from the desk and spinning around, his gun pointed anxiously out in front of him. But it was only Eli standing there.

"Hey! Hey! Careful with that!" he shouted at Nick as he slowed his pace down. Nick reached around and put the gun back on the desk where it had earlier sat.

"You might want to announce yourself as you walk in next time," Nick said quietly under his breath without looking at Eli.

“It’s Kate," Eli said, completely missing Nick's comments. "She’s gone.”

“What do you mean, she’s gone?”

"I'm not sure how much simpler I can put it,” Eli retorted.

Nick turned away from his monitors and looked at Eli. “Shit,” he said seriously, thinking about the implications of her escaping.
Will she bring others here?

“Don’t worry about it," Eli said, as if reading his mind. "She may not be on our side, but I don’t think she’s a danger at the minute.”

“She held a gun to my face!" Nick argued back, turning around to face Eli once again. "She handcuffed me to the chair here!”

“And was there any permanent damage?” Eli asked cheekily, tilting his head slightly as he spoke, giving Nick a condescendingly questioning look.

Nick didn’t respond. Instead, he turned back to the laptop he was working on and continued typing away, completely ignoring Eli's poor attempts at humour.

“What are you thinking?” Eli asked, pointing at the new piece of hardware plugged into Nick's laptop.

“I wrote this piece of code a long time ago,” Nick said in response without even turning around. He was too focused on what he was doing now to have to explain it to somebody else. “I was hoping I’d never have to use it.”

“What is it?” Eli asked seriously, having no idea what Nick was about to do.

“It’s an old piece of code," Nick said as he looked over the code fragments on the monitor. "It will purge the entire system. Wipe out the current version of the PRoGRaM world that we are using.”

“But you’ll kill Owen and Ethan!” Eli responded in shock.

“I won’t,” Nick answered calmly. “The world will just get wiped. But Owen and Ethan will survive.”

“And then?” Eli asked. "What will you do then?"

“I’ll reboot it," Nick said confidently, nodding to himself as he spoke. "I’ll reboot the entire world from nothing.”

"Okay," Eli said.
I think he really can do it. He's confident, that's something. And he can save Owen in the process.
He thought before he threw Nick a follow up question. “Where will Owen come back? Where in the world, I mean?”

“Where-ever I want him to,” Nick said. “I can adapt the world to him now that I’m rebooting it. So let’s give him a bit of an advantage, shall we?”

Chapter Seventy

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: PRoGRaM (CORRUPTION DETECTED)

Where am I? Have I died? Has the corruption killed me?

Is this the end?

The first thing Owen Archer noticed as he began to open his eyes was the sky. The sights and sounds around him slowly filtered into his brain as he started to comprehend what had happened. With no concept of how time worked in this corrupted version of PRoGRaM, it felt like hours since he had hit the water.

The train… the water…
He remembered. Minutes passed before the feeling began to come back into his extremities. His hands were first as he felt a tingle through each of his fingers. With massive effort, he managed to clench his hand into a fist.