Manipulator (43 page)

“I’m sorry,” Alex replied. He hadn't really participated much in this entire conversation. He was merely just in the background, mostly listening in to what everybody else was saying. It was as if he was weighing his options before choosing a side. “I can’t turn this opportunity down.”

“Neither can I,” Marcus answered, siding alongside Ethan and Alex. “This was always going to be the next logical step. Imagine the possibilities!”

“I’m going to have to leave," Owen said. You could almost see the look of disappointment on his face. Whatever was going on, Archer really didn’t want to be involved. "Gentlemen, we’ve done some great work, but I’m afraid that it must end here for me, I cannot be a part of this any longer.”

“But we’re going to need your help,” Ethan replied, speaking quickly. His words were sharp and concerning. Owen was seemingly preparing to leave the room.

“We’re doing good work already with the PRoGRaM memory analyst teams,” Owen answered, speaking calmly back to Ethan. “Look at my team for example, it works perfectly. Why do we have to mess with a system that already works? We have everything we need already to do a good job! We’re already changing the world.”

A few seconds passed in silence.

“You do not have a choice!” Ethan shouted out almost unexpectedly. It seemed that Owen had taken his leave and was on his way out. “You will be a part of this one way or the other!”

The voices stopped.

“What the hell is going on?” Eli asked himself rhetorically. Owen, the real Owen anyway, hadn’t said a word in a while. He just occupied his mind by pacing around the room whilst quietly listening into the events unfolding before him.
How am I supposed to react to this? How is anybody supposed to react in this situation?

“This isn’t going the way I planned it,” Ethan’s voice said quietly, kicking in now that the digital Owen had seemingly left the room.

“We need to call the boss,” Marcus replied, speaking to nobody in particular. Marcus, Alex and Ethan weren't the ones in control. All three of them had always been looking to an outsider to call the shots for them.
The boss.

A short gap in the conversation passed before Ethan's voice kicked things off again. “It’s me…” he said, putting on a more professional voice as he spoke on what Owen guessed was his mobile phone. “We have a problem… Yes? But it’s not been tested yet. … I understand … on Annie? Okay.”

The phone call was over. “They hung up,” Ethan said to Alex and Marcus.

“Are we to implement phase two?” Marcus asked eagerly, with a fearful spike in his voice.

“Yes. Yes we are," Ethan replied quietly, before the anger of a madman began to seep in. "Why can’t we just kill him?”

“You heard the boss,” Marcus answered, speaking a little sheepishly. He almost sounded scared. Maybe it's something to do with the situation that he found himself in? There was something about phase two that was putting him on edge.

“
It’s not our decision to make,” Ethan said slowly, as if he was trying to reassure himself. “The boss made the call. Not us.”

“Why Annie though?” Alex asked in response, bringing a whole new level to the conversation. He sounded just like Marcus had. He too sounded scared and anxious.
But why?
“Why does it have to be her?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said slowly before concluding his innermost thoughts out loud for both Alex and Marcus to hear. “But we know what we have to do next.”

The voices faded out. It was over.

The final pieces of the puzzle were in place.
Or were they?
It still didn’t make sense to Eli, or Owen either for that matter. No matter how hard he thought about it, he still couldn't form a complete picture. “That’s it. It’s over,” Eli said.

Owen quit his pacing and slumped himself down onto a nearby chair. He rested his elbows on his knees and brought his hands to the side of his head. Carefully and therapeutically, he began massaging his temples as he gazed at the laminate flooring beneath him.

“Owen, what’s wrong?” Eli asked, seeing the confusion written all over Owen's face.

“Do you know what it’s like?" Archer replied slowly and quietly, speaking down to the floor. "Do you know what it's like to know that something in your own head is missing? To know that a piece of you is
gone
? No, you don't. And neither did I until tonight. This is what I put people through, Eli. This is my job. To erase parts of people's lives!"

Owen gradually got louder and louder as he made his speech, his voice building up to it's climactic end. He looked up from the floor and stared directly into Eli's eyes.

"This must be how everyone feels when they’re on this side of the gun," Owen continued. "I had no idea that it was like this. If we get out of all this in one piece, and if things ever go back to the way they were, then I can promise you that I’m never using PRoGRaM again. Ever.”

Owen broke eye contact first and turned his gaze back down to the floor whilst holding his head in his hands. Eli didn't press the matter further and just decided to leave Owen alone for the time being. The man obviously wasn’t in the mood for talking at the moment, and who could blame him? Instead, Eli moved off and walked around an adjoining room, attempting to get a feel for PRoGRaM Headquarters. This place was the most incredible feat of PRoGRaM code engineering that he had ever seen. Unexpectedly, one of the walls in the new room that Eli was standing in morphed to a solid shade of white. Gradually, words began to appear on it.

“Nick's sending us a message!” Eli shouted through to Owen in the other room.
This is a crucial moment
. He thought.
What can Nick possibly have for us?
“Owen? Do you want to see it?”

But still, instead of getting up and going into the room where Eli was, Owen just sat sulking in his chair and stared into nothing. “What does it say?” he shouted back, unwilling to move.

“That we need to leave PRoGRaM. Now.”

This peaked Owen’s interest. He sat up and quickly stretched his arms, meaning to get up from his seat and go and see the message, but Eli walked back into the room before he could stand up.

"What's happening?" Owen asked as he stood upright and faced Eli.

“Remember the de-scrambler I ran on your video message? The one that started all of this? Nick says that it’s finally finished running, and we’re sure as hell going to want to see it.”

Chapter Eighty Eight

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Staten Island, New York

The all too familiar feelings and physical repercussions of exiting PRoGRaM had finally taken its toll on Owen. This time around, he was worried that he was never going to wake up, his body felt like a deadweight trying to drag him down to the ground below. But his mind was tougher than that.

The endless cycle of entering and exiting the digital world of PRoGRaM had almost crippled him, both physically and mentally. Owen violently convulsed on the sofa, instantly throwing up the contents of his stomach onto the floor. He hadn't exactly eaten much in the last few hours, so hardly anything came out.

I can’t take much more of this.
 

He wretched again and again until nothing more was willing to leave his body. Nick wasn't in the room to help him, and Eli was still half unconscious from the PRoGRaM exit himself.

Light headedness quickly took over and forced Owen to relax deeply backwards into the sofa. Nick came running back into the room just in time to see Owen close his eyes and let the darkness take him.

Together, Eli and Nick waited for Owen to recover. They both knew that in the end, all that Owen was going to need, was time. At least after this, the man's journey with PRoGRaM was over. They had no further capacity to head back into its digital world. They were spent.
It was almost midnight before Archer came back around, a full hour after passing out.

"I'm sorry for earlier," Owen said quietly, offering an apology to both Eli and Nick. They were the first words that he had spoken after his ordeal of exiting PRoGRaM. He sounded just as bad as he looked. ”Back in the car. I was out of line with the way that I spoke to you both. I over-reacted and blew my top."

”It's not us you need to apologise to," Nick answered quietly. There was something there in his tone of voice, something that told Owen that his apology was accepted, but he couldn't quite say for sure. Nick angled his head slightly and nodded in the direction of Ethan, who was slumped face down awkwardly into a wooden dining table nearby, clearly still unconscious. Eli had securely tied the man up to one of the six oak chairs immediately upon entering this safe house. None of them were willing to take any chances whilst Ethan was here.

"It's him you need to talk to," Nick continued. "Not that I'm saying he didn't deserve it… But hell, you could've handled it better."

"I have nothing to say to him," Owen said.

"Don't worry about it,” Nick replied. “If anyone's got reason to be angry, upset or just damn pissed off, then it's you. I don't blame you for your reactions anymore. This situation is truly fucked up, and just for the record? I think you’re handling it pretty well.”

“Thanks Nick, I appreciate that.”

“Now, saying that, this next part is going to be difficult.”

“Why?” Owen asked quickly and urgently, trying to read Nick's face for the answer.
It's more bad news. It has to be.
“What’s happened?”

“Eli managed to defragment the video file that you were sent. The one that started this mess. The video and audio quality have now been massively cleaned up."

"Can we see who sent it?" Owen asked excitedly.

"Yes," Nick answered with a single word, seemingly refusing to go into more depth than this.

“Well, this is good news, isn’t it?” Owen said whilst trying to force out a smile, but it was difficult considering that every inch of his face ached from each word he spoke and every muscle he moved. “Finally, another lead?”

“That’s what I thought, so I watched it whilst you and Eli were inside PRoGRaM. It’s… not what I was expecting. That’s why I pulled you both out. You’re going to need to see it to believe it."

"Then show me?" Owen asked, wondering what the hold up was.

"Are you sure you want to see this now? Do you not want to wait and rest first?”

“You said a few minutes ago that you thought I was handling all of this well?” Owen replied, confused by the man's logic.

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Nick said whilst shrugging his shoulders, “But I'll be honest with you. This next part is really going to fuck you up.”

“I’m ready," Owen said.
Am I really ready?

"Lets see it.”

Nick stood up from his seat and grabbed the top of his monitor with his right hand. Slowly and carefully, he turned the monitor around so that it pointed in Owen's direction. With his eyes wide in anticipation, Owen looked at the screen. The video happened to be paused right at the beginning, ready and waiting to play.

Nick was right. The picture quality was perfect. Owen could see just who had sent them the cryptic video message in the first place. But out of everybody that he had suspected, this person had never once crossed his mind.

Speechlessly, he stared into the screen.

Staring back at Owen Archer was… Owen Archer.

Chapter Eighty Nine

Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)

Location: Unknown

“You couldn’t tell me this at the beginning of the interview?” Victoria said, looking and sounding more than a little bit annoyed. “The fact that the person who sent the video, was in fact… you?” she finished saying as she pointed to him angrily, her face looking stern.

“I felt it made more sense if you didn’t know everything from the beginning,” Owen said calmly, refusing to rise back to her level of anger. “Just like how I didn’t know everything from the beginning.”

Victoria stared back at him silently before lowering her hand. She took a deep breath in and her face relaxed back into its emotionless stare as she finally conceded to what Owen had said. “I see your point.”

Owen gave her a professional nod as if to say
Thank You
before he continued. “it was only when I saw the raw video that something inside my head
clicked
. Like turning on a light that hasn’t worked in a long, long time. It brought back memories that had clearly been taken from me. Memories that had been taken by PRoGRaM. I had no memory of ever sending that video. Well, not until I saw the unscrambled, raw version of it. Seeing myself do something that I had no memory of was what brought the memories forward. It was what sparked them back to life.”

“I thought that PRoGRaM was foolproof? That once memories were erased, they were gone forever?”

“I never said that,” Owen said with a little smile on his face. Even though he was competent in the use of PRoGRaM, it was true that there were so many things he didn’t know about the device.
Did it really erase memories? Or did it just cut the cord in your mind to them to stop them from being accessed? If it can be broke, then it can be fixed.

Victoria didn’t respond. He was expecting more questions about it, but instead he got nothing. She just sat there staring down at her notepad, continuing to write down her notes on God only knew what. Owen decided to lift the silence by continuing from where he left off. “It’s still a new technology, so there are bound to be bugs and flaws that need to be fixed.”