Manipulator (39 page)

"Done," the man said quickly, completing the task without hassle and without asking any questions.
The wrong question in this line of work, and I'll end up exactly like Richard Sterling. I don't want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.

"
Secondly. There is an executable file on that pen drive. It's called Veridian.exe. Just run it through Sterling's system. This will simultaneously inform every single person involved in the FBI's Special Projects Division to report into Veridian, and how if they fail to comply, they can consider themselves disavowed. Then we will send our own private Veridian task forces after them."

"Done. Do you need me to get out now?"

"Not quite. Finally. I need you to change Owen Archer's agent status to disavowed. Change the timestamp on the order, backdate it, and make it look like it was given by Sterling. We don't want him to have the same fate as everybody else at Special Projects. He needs to be dealt with separately."

"I thought that Owen was taken care of?"

"I had sent a man to take him out. But from what I could see, he's failed and has been captured by Archer and his team."

"Do you need that situation sorting out after this?"

"No. I've already procured a Veridian team to move out shortly in order to take Owen and his entire team out. It's too late for Archer," the boss said. "He'll be dead in minutes."

Chapter Eighty

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: PRoGRaM

“Please,” Owen said softly to Ethan as he collapsed backwards onto a chair. He was desperate, almost willing to beg for the answers. “Please... Tell me what you did to my wife. Tell me why Ethan."

"I did nothing to your wife," he answered emotionlessly from the floor. He was still lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling the entire time, trying to avoid Owen's pleading stare.

"LIAR!" Owen shouted at him, causing him to jump up from the chair he had only sat in moments before. Acting out in a sudden fit of anger, he fired a trio of bullets into the ground near Ethan. But the man was unfazed, he didn't even jump or react to the gunshots. Instead, he just let out a long breath that he seemed to have been holding in.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Ethan replied quietly. “The situation that we’re both in is so utterly fucked up that you wouldn’t believe me even if you tried to.”

“It was you,” Owen said weakly, as he began to lose all hope of ever finding out what really happened to Annie. “It was all you. You were the one in charge all along.”

“No,” Ethan replied, rolling his head from side to side as he lay on the floor, attempting to emphasise his answer. “Didn’t you hear? I’m not the one running the show. My boss is.”

“Then you better tell me who your boss is,” Owen said, trying to sound threatening but failing miserably. He was out of energy, and both he and Ethan knew it.

Ethan let out a deep sigh. “You know that I don’t know the answer to that, Owen.”

“Bullshit,” Owen called out quickly and menacingly, his finger still on the trigger of his gun. It was a slow process, but he could feel Ethan getting underneath his skin. The man was answering every question with such a vagueness that it worked its way deep into Owen's soul, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it without losing the only lead he had.

“Not this time,” Ethan answered weakly. “Not this time… I don’t know who they are. That’s just the way that they plan it.”

“Then who else was in that conversation?” Owen demanded, his forceful tone catching Ethan off guard. “Who else is involved in all of this? It couldn’t have been your boss. But… it was Kate wasn’t it? It was her all along? She’s the fourth person?”

Of course it couldn’t be Kate.
Owen said to himself, suddenly remembering one of his earlier thoughts.
The fourth person has to be male, remember? Ethan mentioned them as a ‘him’ in the memory that we just listened to.

“Ha!” Ethan shouted out forcefully, followed by a short, genuine laugh. “Of course it wasn’t Kate! We only used her to watch you. Oh, and to take Eli out of play. He was getting too close to all of this, you know? But again… not my call.”

Right there and then, Owen got the confirmation on just what he had suspected for the last few days. Eli hadn't abandoned him after all!
I knew all along there was something wrong. The two of us had a deal. He may have been a cyber criminal, but he wouldn't have just backed out of a deal like that. Especially when he thought that I had information that could lead to his arrest.

“It’s like a game of chess,” Ethan said, breaking into Owen's trail of thought without even waiting for him to answer. Ethan had suddenly found some hidden energy from within. Slowly but surely he began to get to his feet, speaking as he rose up from the ground. “We’ve been moving all of the pieces into position for so long right under your nose. And you haven’t even figured out who the strongest piece on the board is yet.”

Owen kept his gun close, wary of Ethan and waiting for him to make any sudden moves. The two of them locked eyes, caught up in a mental standoff. “If you don’t tell me what I want to hear. You’ll wind up as a shell of a man. You know that, right?” Owen said threateningly.

“Empty threats,” Ethan said light heartedly, raising both of his arms up to his sides. “I know you too well, Archer.”

“You don’t know shit about me,” Owen spat back at him.
Ethan knows nothing.
“You don't know anything about what I’ve been through to get to this point. If you don’t tell me the truth, I’m going to start taking every single memory that you hold dear," he continued, suddenly feeling a second wind rising within himself. "Don’t test me any more Ethan. This is the end for me. Who is the fourth person? Give me a name.”

Ethan, completely out of the blue started laughing madly, going from a quiet chuckle to a full blown laugh. “I guess the game is up, isn’t it?” he shouted at Owen with a smile beaming across his face. “Are you sure you want the name?"

"I want his name," Owen said, staring Eli down.

"You know that you can’t undo things after this point, right Owen?"

"I know," he replied, without care for the consequences.
All I want is the final piece of the puzzle.
"Now give me his name."

"Do you want to know how far this really goes?” Ethan asked, openly mocking Owen.
I've really found his button here. I could just keep pressing it and pressing it all day long.

“GIVE ME A NAME!” Owen shouted impatiently as he decided to load another bullet into the chamber of his gun, unwilling to play Ethan's game anymore.

“The fourth person?" Ethan said, looking Owen dead in the eye and finishing his sentence with a smile. “His name is Owen Archer.”

PART SIX: OWEN ARCHER

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Chapter Eighty One

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: PRoGRaM

“You’re lying,” Owen muttered quietly in shock as he slowly walked forwards, holding his weapon with a tight grip. It took every fibre of his being to keep the gun pointed at the ground and to stop himself from raising and firing it at Ethan. He had heard enough lies, and every word out of the man's mouth was pushing Owen closer and closer to the edge.

“I told you that you wouldn’t want to hear the truth," Ethan replied calmly without breaking eye contact. He casually and inconspicuously tried to take a few steps backwards away from Owen, but Archer wasn't going to let him off that easily. With lightning speed, Owen managed to lash out at him, and grabbed him tightly around the collar with his free hand.

"You're lying," Owen said, repeating himself. He spoke louder than he had before and got right into Ethan's face. In a rage, Owen threw the man backwards, forcing him to fall to the ground. He slid slightly across the wooden floor. "Who's the fourth person?"

“Don’t kid yourself Owen," Ethan said sarcastically. "You must have known that something was wrong about this entire situation all along. It’s like putting a shattered mirror together. You can fix it up as much as you want, but the cracks are still there. You’ve been feeling the cracks in your memories for a while now, but you haven’t done anything about them. Instead, you’ve gone
so far out of your way
, looking to others for help, and looking inside others for the answers, when all along, you haven’t done the one thing you should have. Look inside yourself.”

"What did you do to Annie?" Owen growled. He could feel himself getting angrier by the second as he listened to Ethan's ramblings.

"
Nothing
," Ethan replied enthusiastically as he shook his head from where he sat. "But there's something else you need to know, something more important. Something that you
need
to trust me on."

"More lies?"

"Give me more credit than
that
Owen?" Ethan pleaded sincerely, climbing back up to his feet. He kept his eyes on Archer, deciding to stay a good distance away from the man. He was angry. And that meant that he was unpredictable.

"But
you
killed her," Owen said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. His eyes were almost tear filled. All of the emotion had been building up inside him, and Archer was close to his bursting point. "You drove the van into our car and
you
killed her."

Ethan sighed, the agitation slowly began to show in his face. No matter how hard he was trying, he just couldn't get his point across to Owen. "Look, just listen to me okay?" he said quickly, forcing his way into the conversation. "What I'm trying to tell you will probably save your life. I at
least
owe you that much for keeping me alive inside PRoGRaM."

"Tell me," Owen demanded, speaking in as few words as possible. He could hear the desperation in Ethan's voice. Something wasn't right.

"Outside, in the real world, things are about to change. Veridian are going to take back control of PRoGRaM, they're about to end their trial with the FBI."

Veridian
. Owen realised.
I've heard that company name before…

"I only know this because I'm a part of them," Ethan continued. "I work for Veridian, Owen. My boss is a part of Veridian too. You know that I was sent here to kill you. But I've failed. Trust me when I say, they already know this."

How can they possibly know that you've failed?

"And that means that it wont be long until others will be sent in to do the job. This time they won't be as discreet as I was. They
will
use force. Please listen to me Owen. Get us out of PRoGRaM."

Both men locked eyes. Ethan knew exactly what was in coming his way. "Owen," he said, picking his words, speaking slowly and carefully. "I know what's going to happen next. And I want you to know something."

"Yeah?"

"I don't blame you."

Owen didn’t even argue back. He had no more words left to say to the man. Instead, he quickly raised his pistol and fired one well placed shot straight into Ethan's forehead. His head snapped backwards and his body fell limply to the ground with a huge thump as it hit the laminate floor below. In a fit of anger, Owen shouted out and emptied the rest of his ammunition clip into the body of Ethan Darkes. Blood splattered everywhere as every bullet found its place.
 

The bullets may have ran out, but Owen just couldn't stop himself from pulling the trigger of the now-empty weapon.
Click. Click. Click.
was all he heard as the onslaught of bullets ended and the trigger of the gun just clicked underneath his finger.

He breathed heavily and dropped the expended weapon to the floor. Owen suddenly noticed that his hands were trembling massively as a huge rush of adrenaline surged through his veins. Blood seeped out from underneath Ethan's mangled corpse, spilling out heavily onto the wooden floor. Owen looked down at what he'd done, realising that he had finally found a way to release the emotions that he'd been building up and holding inside.

“Get me out of here. Now,” Owen said in a serious, yet quiet tone. He was done. It was time to leave. It was time to find out what was going on in the real world.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Chapter Eighty Two

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Owen's Apartment, New York

The world around him was sucked into oblivion as the real world began to seep back into Owen's field of vision. Consciousness slowly came back to him over the course of the next few minutes. His groggy head and weak body began to slowly heal itself as time passed. PRoGRaM hadn't quite beaten him yet.

Eventually, Owen managed to pull his body upright. Whilst gently cradling his head, he knocked back a few aspirin tablets that someone had kindly laid out on a nearby table to help him on his way.

Eli slowly walked up to him, trying not to startle the man. “Owen?" he asked. "Are you okay?” Nick watched intently from the hub of their operation, stood behind a makeshift desk watching the situation in front of him unfold.

“Eli?” Owen questioned weakly, still trying to find strength. Despite this, the confusion in his tone was evident. “I thought you’d bailed on us?”